Joshua Williams
Degrees
University of California, Berkeley, Ph.D.University of London, M.A.
Princeton University, A.B.
Expertise
African and postcolonial literature, modern and contemporary drama, performance and politics, theatre history, performance studies, animal studies, ecocriticism, environmental humanities, critical theory, pedagogical theory, and the history of science.Profile
Joshua Williams is a writer, teacher, director and scholar currently serving as a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Brandeis University. His academic research concerns the political figure of the animal in East African theatre and performance. His articles, essays and reviews have appeared in ASTR Online, Theatre Journal, The Johannesburg Salon, Theatre Survey, Performance Research, African Theatre, Modern Drama, The Cambridge Companion to Theatre and Science, Africa is a Country, HowlRound, Brittle Paper and The Los Angeles Review of Books. He is also translating the complete plays of the Tanzanian dramatist Ebrahim Hussein from Swahili into English for Oxford University Press. He earned his AB from Princeton University in Comparative Literature with certificates in African Studies and Creative Writing; his MA from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, also in Comparative Literature; and his PhD in Performance Studies, with a Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory, from the University of California, Berkeley.In 2007, New York Magazine named him "a star of tomorrow" on the basis of his forthcoming novel, "Bird in Blue." He has published creative nonfiction essays in Blunderbuss and Hippocampus. His plays have been produced or developed at Theatre Intime, Princeton University, the Capital Fringe Festival, UC Berkeley, CU Boulder, the New York Musical Theatre Festival, CAP 21, Ars Nova's ANT Fest, SUNY Buffalo, the Rhinebeck Writers' Retreat, Play Ground San Francisco / Thick House, TED and Goodspeed Musicals. He was a 2012-2013, 2014-2015 and 2015-2016 member of the PlayGround San Francisco Writing Pool and had three of his short plays read at Berkeley Repertory Theatre and one published in The Best of PlayGround. In 2011, he directed the North American premiere of Ebrahim Hussein's "Kinjeketile" at UC Berkeley.
Courses Taught
| ENG | 42b | Animals and Literature |
| ENG | 62b | Contemporary African Literature, Global Perspectives |
| ENG | 111b | Postcolonial Theory |
| ENG | 131b | Decolonial Pedagogy |
| ENG | 186a | The Literature of Objects |
Awards and Honors
Selected for Goodspeed Musicals Residency (2021)
Scholarship
Williams, Joshua. "Dr. See-Through and His Kin: East African Theatre in the Interregnum." Theatre after Empire. Ed. Young, Harvey and Geigner, Megan. New York: Routledge, 2021 (forthcoming)
Williams, Joshua. "Kenyan Contemporary Art and the Time of the Posthuman." Antennae: The Journal of Art and Nature (2021). (forthcoming)
Williams, Joshua. "Mercies and Infelicities." The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism (2021). (forthcoming)
Williams, Joshua. "The Smell." Theatre Topics (2021). (forthcoming)
Chaudhuri, Una and Williams, Joshua. "The Play at the End of the World: Deke Weaver's 'Unreliable Bestiary' and the Theatre of Extinction." The Cambridge Companion to Theatre and Science. Ed. Shepherd-Barr, Kirsten E.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. 70-84.
Williams, Joshua. Shelter. 2020. Imagined Theatres IV - "Emergency".