Esther K. Lee, Frances Hill Fox Professor of Theater Studies

Esther Kim Lee is Frances Hill Fox Professor of Theater Studies, International Comparatives Studies, and History and the Director of Asian American and Diaspora Studies at Duke. She specializes in theatre history and dramatic criticism. She teaches and writes about Asian American theatre, Korean diaspora theatre, interculturalism, and globalization and theatre. 

She is the author of A History of Asian American Theatre (Cambridge University Press, 2006), which received the 2007 Award for Outstanding Book given by Association for Theatre in Higher Education, and The Theatre of David Henry Hwang (Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2015). She is the editor of Seven Contemporary Plays from the Korean Diaspora in the Americas (Duke University Press, 2012). From 2013 to 2014, she was the Chief Editor of Theatre Survey, the flagship journal of the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR), and served as ASTR’s Vice President for Publications from 2017 to 2019. Her new book, Made-Up Asians: Yellowface During the Exclusion Era is forthcoming from University of Michigan Press in summer 2022. She has also just published with Bloomsbury a four-volume collection, Modern and Contemporary World Drama: Critical and Primary Sources, which challenges the prevailing Eurocentric reading of modern drama.

In 2023, she received the Distinguished Scholar Award from the American Society for Theatre Research.


 

Contact Info:

Office Location:	Box 90680, Durham, NC 27708
Office Phone:	+1 919 660 3367
Email Address:
Web Page:	http://estherkimlee.com

Teaching (Spring 2024):

• THEATRST 402S.01, HISTORY OF ACTING Synopsis

  Page 106, TuTh 11:45 AM-01:00 PM

  (also cross-listed as HISTORY 431S.01)

• THEATRST 232S.01, ASIAN AMERICAN THEATER Synopsis

  Page 106, MW 11:45 AM-01:00 PM

  (also cross-listed as AADS 232S.01, AMES 182S.01, ENGLISH 387S.01)

Education:

Ph.D.

Ohio State University

2000

Keywords:

Asian American theater • Drama • Drama--20th century • Drama--21st century • Korean diaspora • Theater--Korea--History--20th century • Theater--United States--History--20th century

Recent Publications   (More Publications)

1. Lee, EK; Odom, G; Dharwadker, AB, A conversation about new directions in studies of modernity and theatre, Studies in Theatre and Performance, vol. 43 no. 1 (January, 2023), pp. 108-119 [doi]
2. Lee, EK, A genealogy of the Fu Manchu Mustache, in Monsters in Performance: Essays on the Aesthetics of Disqualification (June, 2022), pp. 125-140, ISBN 9780367683900 [doi]
3. Lee, EK, Made-Up Asians: Yellowface During the Exclusion Era (January, 2022), pp. 1-268, ISBN 9780472075430 [doi]  [abs]
4. Lee, EK, BD WONG (San Francisco, California, 1960-), in Fifty Key Figures in Queer Us Theatre (January, 2022), pp. 242-245, ISBN 9781032067995 [doi]
5. MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY WORLD DRAMA Critical and Primary Sources (2022), ISBN 9781350121942  [abs]