July 2, 2024
The Department of Theatre and Dance at The University of Texas at Austin is thrilled to announce the hire of Dr. Luke Williams, who will join the department in the fall 2024 semester as an Assistant Professor in Performance as Public Practice and Expanding Approaches to American Arts areas at the College of Fine Arts.
Dr. Williams is an interdisciplinary scholar, artist, organizer and critic of 20th and 21st-century Black diasporic performance and visual cultures. His in-progress manuscript titled In the Black: Figures of Racial Capitalism examines the practices of four Black emerging artists as they navigate the pressures of racial capitalism in the art market. The project charts how these artists adopted performative and aesthetic strategies of refusal to reorient frameworks of value when Black figuration sold for a market premium. Through this project and others, Williams queries narratives of freedom and the radical imagination. He is the editor of Blood, Sweat, and Time: Emerging Perspectives on Mildred Howard and Adrian Burrell, published by SmingSming Books and the Institute of Contemporary Art San José.
“I am inspired by the energy from UT Austin’s student body,” shares Dr. Williams. “I look forward to joining a community where everyone is excited to learn and share their expertise. It’s a special atmosphere.”
A collaborative maker himself, Williams is often on stage or in the gallery as part of his creative endeavors. His performance practice excavates site-specific histories to devise community-based responses in the present. You can find his writing in academic journals, museums and popular outlets across the nation. Recent projects include INERTIA (Stanford Nitery Experimental Theater, 2020-2021), which offers a new ritual for grieving amidst the prolonged moment of continuous suffering arising from the COVID-19 pandemic and the percussive drumbeat of anti-blackness, as well as serving as a visiting scholar at the San José Institute of Contemporary Art and Second Street Gallery, among others.
"Dr. Williams deepens the department's existing strength in performance scholarship while simultaneously expanding our collective research profile into visual cultures," shares department chair Dr. Peter Carpenter. "Given the strong design practices that steep the department's curriculum and production activities, it feels particularly exciting to include a scholar with expertise in visual cultures in the department. I'm confident that the expansive nature of his expertise and thoughtful approach to pedagogy will bring exciting new insights and opportunities to the Department of Theatre and Dance."
Williams holds a Ph.D. in Modern Thought & Literature from Stanford University, where he was a Diversifying Academia, Recruiting Excellence (DARE) fellow. He also received his B.A. in Political & Social Thought as a Jefferson Scholar at the University of Virginia.
Learn more about Williams’s work at lukewilliamsphd.com