This Fall 2022, Professor Isaiah M. Wooden will join Swarthmore's Theater Department as our newest faculty member.  Professor Wooden will be teaching Theater & Performance. 

A scholar of twentieth- and twenty-first century African American art, drama, and performance, Dr. Wooden has contributed more than forty articles, essays, and reviews to scholarly and popular publications, including The Black Scholar, Callaloo, Journal of American Drama and Theatre, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Modern Drama, Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, Performing Ethos, QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, Theater, Theatre Journal, Theatre Survey, and Theatre Topics, among others. He is currently at work on a monograph that explores the interplay of race and time in post-civil rights Black expressive culture and is co-editing a volume on playwright August Wilson for Cambridge University Press’ “Literature in Context” series. He is also the co-editor of Tarell Alvin McCraney: Theater, Performance, and Collaboration (Northwestern UP, 2020).

Wooden has directed both new and canonical works in the US and abroad, including plays by Lee Breuer, Kia Corthron, Eisa Davis, Lorraine Hansberry, Tarell Alvin McCraney, Charles L. Mee, Lynn Nottage, Robert O’Hara, A. Rey Pamatmat, Natsu Onoda Power, Nilaja Sun, and Mary Zimmerman. Recent dramaturgy projects include Native Son by Nambi E. Kelley and the world premiere of Les Deux Noirs: Notes on Notes of a Native Son by Psalmayene 24.

Prior to joining the faculty at Swarthmore, Wooden taught at American University, Brandeis University, and Georgetown University. He enjoys teaching a range of courses in the history, theory, and practice of theater.

For more on Professor Wooden, please visit his website. We are thrilled to welcome him to our department!