2017 Thomas Marshall Award Goes to Sissi Liu

Sissi Liu (Ph.D. ’18, Theatre), a former Presidential Research Fellow at The Graduate Center, received the 2017 American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) Thomas Marshall Award, a highly competitive honor that recognizes graduate students’ achievements in research and creative activities, teaching, and service.

Liu is a specialist in modern and contemporary performance with a focus on race, technology, sexuality, and gender. Her dissertation, “Wukongism: Monkey King, Kungfu/Jazz, and Asian/American Performance,” offers one of the first non-Western conceptual frameworks to examine cross-cultural theater and performance.

“I’m very grateful to the theatre and performance program at the GC for the rigorous training and tremendous endorsement I received,” Liu said. “I am fortunate to have worked at the James Gallery and GC’s New Media Lab, and to have taught at multiple CUNY colleges. I thank my dissertation committee, including Lucille Lortel Professor Jean Graham-Jones, the committee chair; Distinguished Professor David Savran; Professor Peter Eckersall; and Professor Esther Kim Lee of Duke University, for their continuous guidance and unwavering support over the years.”

Liu works across multiple media including theater and dance, music, fashion and design, graphic novels, and digital performance. She received her Ph.D. in September 2018, and is now a visiting scholar at Brown University. She was elected and currently serves as the president of the Graduate Student Caucus at ASTR.