
Assistant Professor of Theatre, Seattle Pacific University
PhD
Fields of Interest
Biography
Shelby Lunderman is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Washington. She received her MA in Theatre Studies from Florida State University and her BFA in Theatre Performance from Baylor University with a minor in Political Science focused on U.S. Constitutional Law.
Not only has she taught drama-as-process courses in correctional facilities in both Texas and Florida, Shelby actively researches the relationship between prison and theatre through ethnography and archival research. She is currently interested in the ways in which performance, broadly-conceived, is used for activist purposes fighting against the Age of Mass Incarceration in the United States.
Her dissertation, "Cruel and Unusual Performance: (Re)producing Capital Punishment on the U.S. Stage" examines theatrical representations of state-sanctioned executions in the United States from the early twentieth century to the present through an in-depth engagement with stage performance, contemporaneously circulating scholarly and legal discourses regarding the death penalty, and Foucauldian concepts of punishment, security, governmentality, and biopolitics. Through this research, the project interrogates how such stagings of the death penalty (re)produce—consciously or sub-consciously—the conditions under which capital punishment in the U.S. thrives.
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Selected Research
- Lunderman, Shelby. Cruel and Unusual Performance: (Re)producing Capital Punishment on the U.S. Stage. 2020. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Scott Magelssen and Shelby Lunderman. “Slow Down or Else: The Perils of Rapidity on Academics’ Mental Health.” In Reversing the Cult of Speed in Higher Education, edited by Jonathan Chambers and Stephanie Gearhart. Routledge, 2019.
- Scott Magelssen and Shelby Lunderman. “Tactical Slowness: Fomenting a Culture of Mental Health in the Academy.” Reversing the Cult of Speed in Higher Education: The Slow Movement in the Arts and Humanities. Ed. Jonathan Chambers and Stephannie Gearhart (Routledge, 2018).
- Elizabeth Osborne and Shelby Lunderman. “This is the Dawning of the Age of the Online Course: Reimagining Introduction to Theatre.” In New Directions in Teaching Theatre Arts, edited by Anne Fliotsos and Gail Medford. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
- “Power Perspective, and Role-Play: Mock Interviews with Inmates.” Mid-America Theatre Conference. Milwaukee, Wisconsin. March 15-18, 2018.
- “The Incarceration of Language: Xhosa and the Performance of Race in South Africa’s Ubuze Bam.” Mid-America Theatre Conference. Milwaukee, Wisconsin. March 15-18, 2018.
- “The Last ‘Last Meal’: Reexamining Execution and the Performance of Power.” Mid-America Theatre Conference. Houston, Texas. March 16-19, 2017.
- “The Nature of Orca Encounters: SeaWorld Post-Blackfish.” Working Group, American Society for Theatre Research. Atlanta, Georgia. November 16-19, 2017.
- “Resolution through Radio: Juvenile Delinquency, Buffalo, and the Federal Theatre Project." MA in Theatre Studies Thesis. Florida State University. 2016.
- Elizabeth A. Osborne and Shelby Lunderman. ”This is the Dawning of the Age of the Online Course: Process, Practice, & Pageantry in Introduction to Theatre.” Mid-America Theatre Conference. Minneapolis, Minnesota. March 17-20, 2016.
- “’A medium for informing persons:’ Kamishibai and Land Reform in Allied Occupied Japan” Mid-America Theatre Conference. Cleveland, Ohio, March 6-9, 2014.
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Additional Courses
BRAVE: Substance Abuse Education for Women
Travis County Jail, Texas (Summer, 2016)Career Development Through Simulation
Wakulla State Correctional Facility, Florida (Summer, 2015)Literacy in Life: Developing Tools Through Simulation
Wakulla State Correctional Facility, Florida (Summer, 2015) -
Professional AffiliationsASTR, ATHE, MATC