Transmission in Motion – Sarah Bay Cheng, “Everybody’s Historiography”

As museums seek to broaden and diversify their audiences, many are turning to new digitally enhanced displays and interactive exhibits. One prominent effect of the influx of digital technologies is that historical exhibitions now often function as performances or games, dynamically changing in response to different visitors and capable of responding to new contexts as they emerge. This seminar explores the effects of digital history as performance and its broader effect on contemporary culture. What does it mean when history can be digitally altered in its reception? How are these digital performances changing contemporary perceptions of the past and our experiences in the present?

Sarah Bay-Cheng is Chair and Professor of Theater and Dance at Bowdoin College, where she teaches theater history and theory, dramatic literature, and intermedia performance. Her research focuses on the intersections among theater, performance, and media including cinema history, social media, and digital technologies in performance. She currently edits the Palgrave book series, Avant-Gardes in Performance and is a co-host for On TAP: A Theatre and Performance Studies podcast. Sarah was in 2015 a Fulbright Visiting Professor at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. She has served on the boards of Performance Studies international and the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, and contributes to several editorial and advisory boards.