ABOUT ME
I am a writer, dramaturg, theatre creator, and educator working in T'karonto, the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples.
I'm an Assistant Professor in the School of Professional Communication at Toronto Metropolitan University. My research examines political violence through performance and communication theory.
My writing has examined the relationship between performance, communication, militarization, and racism in a range of media, including comics, theatre, live art, photography, digital media, protest, and law.
My current book project asks, “In what ways can words kill?” Some language kills directly, as with an execution order, while the violence in other language is less direct. A law that removes the rights of a particular community, for example, is language that may lead to higher death rates for certain people. Whether direct or indirect, for language to kill, words must be performed in particular ways. Echoing Dorota Sajewska, I call this language that kills “necro-performance.” Titled "The Body at War: Necro-Performance and the Global War on Terror," my book will examine how language was used in the War on Terror to establish landscapes of violence in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. In addition, it will highlight artists from the region whose creative work exposes patterns of racialization, surveillance, and gender-based violence that Middle Eastern and Central Asian bodies have been subjected to in the War on Terror.