Keynote Speaker Danielle Bainbridge
The Art of Research
Danielle Bainbridge was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of African American Studies in the 2018-2019 academic year. She is an assistant professor of theatre and performance studies. Her ongoing book project Refinements of Cruelty: Enslavement, Enfreakment, and the Performance Archive examines the lives of African American sideshow and freak show performers who were also enslaved. Her project received the support of a Ford Foundation pre-doctoral fellowship (2014-2017). A full description can be found on Danielle’s faculty bio page.
In addition to her academic research, Danielle is also a creative writer, playwright and web series host. She is the researcher, writer, and host of the PBS Digital Studios web series The Origin of Everything which focuses on highlighting unusual and under told history and streams on Youtube and Facebook Watch. Her creative nonfiction and fiction appears in Moko Magazine, Killens Review of Arts & Letters, and The Mechanics’ Institute Review Online. She was the inaugural winner of the 2015 Barry Lopez prize for creative nonfiction from Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts (judged by Nick Flynn) and a semi-finalist for the Kore Press 2016 memoir award. She received a 2016 scholarship from the Tin House creative writing workshop in Portland, Oregon. Her first play Curio premiered at the University of Pennsylvania in April 2018 and also appeared at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August 2018.