Faculty Leaders

Peggy Phelan

Ann O'Day Maples Professor in the Arts and professor of theater and performance studies and English

Peggy Phelan started her career at Stanford in 2003, and joined the english department in 2006. She now holds a joint appointment in theatre and performance studies and english. 

Professor Phelan’s work reflects her broad-ranging and passionate interests in contemporary theater, art, photography, literature, dance, and film. 

She is the author of Unmarked: The Politics of Performance and Mourning Sex: Performing Public Memories, which received an honorable mention Calloway Prize for dramatic criticism 1997-1999.

She has written more than 60 articles and essays in scholarly, artistic and commercial magazines ranging from Artforum to Signs. These essays have been cited in architecture, art history, psychoanalytic criticism, visual culture, performance studies, theatre studies and film and video studies. She has edited special issues of the journals Narrative and Women and Performance.

Professor Phelan has been a fellow of the Humanities Institute at UC-Irvine and of the Humanities Institute of the Australian National University in Canberra. She served on the editorial board of Art Journal, one of three quarterly publications of the College Art Association, and as chairwoman of the board. She has been president of Performance Studies International.