About Sarah

Dr. Sarah Bay-Cheng is Dean and Professor of Theatre & Performance Studies in the School of the Arts, Media, Performance and Design (AMPD) at York University in Toronto. Her research and writing focuses on the intersections between theatre and media including histories of film, social media, and technology in performance. She is the author or editor of 4 books, including Performance and Media: Taxonomies for a Changing Field (2015) and Mapping Intermediality in Performance (2010) as well as more than 100 academic essays, lectures and reviews. She also writes and gives talks on performance and media in popular culture, including film, social media, and sports. Prior to becoming Dean of AMPD at York, Bay-Cheng served as Chair of Theater and Dance at Bowdoin College (Maine, USA) and as the Founding Director for the Techne Institute for the Arts and Emerging Technologies at the University at Buffalo (New York, USA).

She was a founding co-host for On TAP: A Theatre and Performance Studies podcast and still drops in on the conversation from time to time. Bay-Cheng frequently lectures internationally and in 2015 was a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. She currently serves as Vice-Chair of the Board for the Canadian Association of Fine Arts Deans and on the boards for the International Council of Fine Arts Deans, Factory Theatre (Toronto), and StageView.tv, among others.

Bay-Cheng is grateful for her liberal arts education at Wellesley College (A.B. with honours, magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, 1996) and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (Ph.D., 2001).

Short Bio

Sarah Bay-Cheng is Dean of the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design and Professor of Theatre & Performance Studies at York University in Toronto, Canada. Her research focuses on the intersections of media and performance, including four books, most recently Performance and Media: Taxonomies for a Changing Field (2015) and more than 100 essays, lectures and reviews. Bay-Cheng has taught as a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Media and Cultural Studies at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and a founding co-host for On TAP: A Theatre & Performance Studies Podcast.