Sarah Bay-Cheng lectures and speaks at universities and institutions around the world.

Recent Lectures & Keynotes by Dr. Bay-Cheng

  • Catalyst Centre, Toronto Metropolitan University (hosted online) April 24, 2023.

  • Keynote, Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance, University of Toronto, February 10, 2023.

  • Lecture, Metalab, Harvard University and Frei Universit¨at-Berlin, January 27, 2023. (Lecture delivered online.)

  • Keynote, European Association for the Studies of Theatre and Performance, Vilnius University, 23-24 September 2021. (Lecture delivered online.)

  • Keynote, Volkswagen Foundation Symposium, “Post-COVID-19 Art Worlds: Viral Theatre, Precarity and Medical Humanities,” Hannover, Germany, 21-23 July 2021. (Lecture delivered online.)

  • Invited Lecture, Performance Studies Working Group, Yale University, September 10, 2020.

    Also presented in modified versions at:
    • Keynote, UCLA Graduate Conference (February 20, 2021)

    • Keynote, University of Southern Mississippi (March 10, 2021)

    • York University Graduate Theatre Student Colloquium (March 16, 2021)

  • Full list of invited lectures and keynotes available in resume.

York University Speeches and Keynotes

  • Fourth year course focused on the intersection of theory and practice in contemporary performance across theatre, dance, installation, and more. Using the central frame of ‘post-‘ we explore the ways in which contemporary work follows intersecting histories and current events to respond to and shape contemporary culture.

  • Independent study on the history and current practice of media studios in the age of streaming.

Bowdoin College, USA

  • Senior faculty teaching award as nominated and selected by Bowdoin students.

  • This first-year seminar introduced students to performance theory, critical analysis, and cultural studies through diverse works related to the fictional British spy character, James Bond. Considered selected Bond films, Ian Fleming’s novels, as well as comic books, music, and other works related to the iconic series including parodies and spoofs (e.g., Austin Powers, Jason Bourne).

  • This course introduces students to the history of theater and performance as paradoxically both a social art (something that brings people together in time and space) and a form of media (literally a divide between people). The course begins with American playwright Anne Washburn’s futuristic play, Mr. Burns, and then analyzes contemporary media as forms of cultural performance. From the contemporary moment, the course traces the effects observed in contemporary theater, dance, and media through diverse global performance histories.

  • What does it mean to act (or dance) like an American? This course examined representative American performances in drama, dance, and theatrical events as reflections of changing American identities. Included indigenous and colonial drama, as well as history of drama, musical theater, and dance of the 19th and 20th centuries. In particular, we will look at the ways in which specific performances defined what it meant to be American, as well as how individual artists reshaped theater and dance to represent their own diverse identities.

Utrecht University - Fulbright Senior Scholar

  • Invited masters seminar in the Department of Media and Cultural Studies, fall 2015.

  • Invited university lecture in the ‘Why Theatre?’ Lecture Series. Het Huis, Utrecht, December 2015

University of Buffalo, USA

  • Developed new graduate seminars on research methods, scholarship, and professional practices in theatre and performance studies. (Taught 610, 620) Emphasis on emerging methodologies, especially digital humanities research and practice-based research.

  • Graduate seminar in production dramaturgy; included modules on live events outside of theatre, dance, and dramaturgy in new media and intermedial performance.

  • Combined undergraduate/graduate seminar in Department of Media Study. Coined after an elite military force, “avant-garde” film and media regularly appear in contemporary mass media in everything from music videos to corporate advertising. Have we arrived at the post-avant-garde? What constitutes an avant-garde film? Has the phrase become defunct in an age of almost instantaneous appropriation? This course is an advanced study in the theory and practice of avant-garde film and video and its connection to popular culture today. Students will analyze seminal works of past avant-garde(s) in connection with contemporary popular culture and media theory.

  • Intermedia performance embraces and explores the nexus between media arts and performance, and seeks to introduce the methodology of Performance Studies (itself an anti-discipline) to contemporary media theory. The first part of the course will be devoted largely to developing both a general theory of intermedia performance and individualized theories of intermediality specifically tailored to the individual art practice of each student. In the second part of the course, students develop individual projects—either practice-based or critical—shaped by reading and collective exercises. This production segment of the course will consist of in-class experiments and a longer term project integrating live and virtual performance with video/film, computer graphics, virtual reality, motion capture.