Biography

Dr. Smith is a theatre historian, performance studies scholar, and playwright.  As a theatre historian, her work in French theatre of the 17^th and 19^th centuries has been presented at conferences on theatre and French history in America, Canada, England, Scotland, Germany, and the Czech Republic. Her publications include The Performance of Masculinity in Molière’s Comédies-Ballets: Staging the Courtier (Ashgate, 2005) and an essay in Author as Character (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1999). Dr. Smith is currently at work on a study of female performers working in Paris from 1850 to 1914. Her plays have been produced and read in America and Europe. She is the Chair of Playwriting for Region VI for the Kennedy Center/American College Theatre Festival, and she has been the Awards Administrator for the Jane Chambers Playwriting Award, given by ATHE & WTP, which is an international competition for women playwrights and plays about women. She is the producer and artistic director of New Visions, New Voices, where three original scripts written by senior playwriting students are developed and produced; this festival is an annual feature of production season of the Division of Theatre.