Doria E. Charlson is thrilled to be joining the faculty of the department of Theatre and Dance at UC Davis as a Visiting Assistant Professor. Doria earned her PhD in Theatre Arts and Performance Studies from Brown University, from which she also holds MA degrees in History and Theatre Arts and Performance Studies. She also earned a BA in History with a minor in Drama from Stanford University. Her manuscript project, Consuming Crises: Migrant Labor, Spectacle, and Precarity in the 20th Century considers how the laboring body becomes mobilized during moments of economic and social crisis. The project uses rigorous archival work to question how particular modes of embodiment spectacularize migrant laborers in service of the reproduction of capital across various sites and decades. Her writing and scholarship can be found in TDR: The Drama Review, Women & Performance, and Dance Research Journal, as well as in African American Arts: Activism, Aesthetics, and Futurity (Rutgers UP 2019).

Doria’s research and scholarship is deeply informed by her decades of praxis as a dancer. She has trained with ODC/Dance, Mark Morris Dance Group, the Alvin Ailey School, the Joffrey Ballet School, L’école Superieuse de Danse Rosella Hightower, and at Stanford University (Diane Frank, Robert Moses, and Aleta Hayes). Doria’s work on political economic systems and how the body moves in/as capitalism has been enhanced by her work as a professional chaplain. She completed her residency as an oncology chaplain at UCSF Medical Center and holds a certificate in Interreligious Chaplaincy from the Graduate Theological Union. 

Doria was born and raised in San Francisco and is overjoyed to be back in her home state. Her favorite color is orange.