Rashida Z. Shaw McMahon is an Associate Professor of English and an Affiliated Faculty of African American Studies and Theater at Wesleyan University. Her course offerings and research exemplify interdisciplinary methodologies and collaborative approaches towards examining: the dramatic and performance traditions of African Americans and the larger African Diaspora; American drama; American musical theatre; American and European theatre and performance histories; theatrical spectatorship; dramatic adaptations of poetry, novels, and historical fiction; and, the application of critical race theories, gender theories, sexuality theories, and popular culture theories to drama and performance. Her book, __The Black Circuit: Race, Performance, and Spectatorship in Black Popular Theatre__(Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2020), examines “Chitlin Circuit” theatrical productions and the reception practices of African American spectators. Professor Shaw McMahon’s scholarship has appeared in various print and online journals, such as E-misfèrica, in media res: a media commons project, Theatre Survey, Theatre Topics, and Theatre Research International as well as in edited anthologies on race, performance, media, musical theatre, and sociology, including __The New Black Sociologists: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives__ (Routledge, 2018), __The Palgrave Handbook of Musical Theatre Producers__ (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), __From Madea to Media Mogul: Theorizing Tyler Perry__  (The University Press of Mississippi, 2016), __Black Theater is Black Life: An Oral History of Theater and Dance in Chicago, 1970-2010__ (Northwestern University Press, 2013), and __Sticky Reputations: The Politics of Collective Memory in Midcentury America__ (Routledge, 2011). Her interviews with playwrights and actors of “Chitlin Circuit” Theatre have been published by __Time Out Chicago__ magazine. She has been consulted as an expert in African American theatre and drama by journalists from the __Kansas City Star__ and the __Milwaukee Journal Sentinel__. Her current research projects include an investigation into the public exhibition of children from the Danish West Indies (referred to today as the United States Virgin Islands) in early twentieth century Denmark and an investivation into the hypervisibility of African American women characters within the plays of August Wilson. In 2016, she was awarded the Mellon Mays Mentor of the Year Award at Wesleyan. Professor Shaw McMahon is originally from the island of St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Phone: 860-685-2448
Address: Department of English
Wesleyan University
294 High Street
Middletown, CT 06f459