Elise Morrison

Elise Morrison is Assistant Professor of Theater and Performance Studies at Yale, where she teaches courses such as Feminist Theater, Theater History, and Digital Media in Performance. She received her PhD in theater and performance studies from Brown University and held a postdoctoral fellowship in interdisciplinary performance studies at Yale from 2012 to 2015. She has taught at Texas A&M University and at Harvard University, where she also served as the associate director for speaking instruction at the Bok Center for Teaching and Learning.   

Morrison’s first book, Discipline and Desire: Surveillance Technologies in Performance, was published by University of Michigan Press in 2016. Morrison edited a special issue on “Surveillance Technologies in Performance” for the International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media (Routledge, 11.2) and has published on this topic in IJPADM, Theater Magazine, and TDR. Her current research focuses on theatrical performances that stage technologies of contemporary warfare—from military drones to virtual reality interfaces used to train and rehabilitate soldiers—in interactive scenarios that seek to intervene in habits of passive spectatorship and immobilized ethical responsiveness that have been induced by spectacular representations of war fought “at a distance.” Also a practicing artist, Morrison is a singer-songwriter and theater director, and has created and performed multiple intermedia cabaret performances that focus on gender, surveillance, and mediatized culture.