Lily Mengesha

Lily Mengesha is the Fletcher Foundation Assistant Professor of Dramatic Literature in the Department of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies at Tufts University. Her research and teaching live at the intersection of critical Indigenous studies, gender and sexuality studies and performance theory. Her current book project, Critical Dreaming: Performance and Decoloniality in the Americas, argues for dreaming as a central tool for perceptual transformation within a decolonial project, particularly in the works of Indigenous-centered and feminist artists throughout North and Central America. Her research seeks to illuminate how artists use their bodies as active agents for documenting legacies of dispossession as well as blueprints for healing and transformation. Her writing on this topic can be found in The Drama Review, Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present Journal, and Canadian Theatre Review. 

Dr. Mengesha's research has been supported by various awards, grants and fellowships including the New England Humanities Consortium, the Center for Humanities at Tufts, MIT School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, the American Society for Theatre Research, the Joukowsky Family Foundation, the Cogut Center for the Humanities, the Pembroke Center for the Research and Teaching of Women, the Social Science Research Council and Mellon Mays Foundation. She currently serves on the advisory board of Tufts’ Women Gender and Sexuality Studies program, as well as a member of the Executive Committee for the American Society of Theatre Research.