Bryony White
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Dr Bryony WhiteAssistant Professor in Theatre and Performance Studies Director of Graduate Studies |
About:
My research sits at the intersection of performance studies and art history, focusing on performance, visual art, and experimental art forms since 1960, with an emphasis on gender and sexuality. Much of my research engages Marxist, queer, and aesthetic theory to examine how visual art and performance contend with and reconfigure the material, political, and economic structures that shape artistic production. My previous writing and research have explored performance and visual art concerning such diverse themes and topics as sexual and gender violence, labour, trauma, HIV/AIDS, pleasure and desire, as well as crime scene technologies. My forthcoming monograph Legal Aesthetics: Sexual Intimacy in Art and Performance tracks an emergent phenomenon in contemporary art and performance marked by an acute engagement with legal processes and visual forms. Beginning in the 1970s and continuing to the present, this book examines how artists engage with legal principles, methods, and aesthetics. It traces how their work explores questions of law, legality, and the state. It also examines how these artists challenge the law’s regulative function in protecting the interests of private property, heterosexuality, and the nuclear family and in structuring and legitimating intimate and social relations in the US.
Alongside my academic research, I am interested in writing that connects with broader publics outside of the university, and I am currently writing a non-fiction book entitled Dirty Queers, which explores the relationship between sexuality, art and capitalism, and is forthcoming from Serpent's Tail (Profile Books) in 2026.
I have held positions in the Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies at the University of Glasgow, where I worked on the AHRC-funded project ‘Live Art in Scotland’. I have also taught in the Drama department at Queen Mary University of London, the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, and in the English department at King’s College London, where I received my PhD in 2020, and an Elsevier Outstanding Thesis Prize in 2021. In 2019, I was a Visiting International Fellow at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery and have collaborated with cultural institutions and galleries such as Tate, the Women of the World Foundation, Glasgow’s Centre for Contemporary Arts and London’s Institute of Contemporary Art to run public programmes and seminar series for artists and the general public. I regularly write reviews and essays about art and culture for publications such as frieze, ArtReview, the Times Literary Supplement, and LA Review of Books, and in 2020, I wrote a monthly column for Elephant magazine about sex and desire. In 2023, I was the winner of the Early Career Researcher Prize from the Theatre and Performance Research Association for my article, 'Returning to the Scene of the Crime: Gendered and Racialized in Ana Mendieta’s Rape Scene’ for Art Journal. I am a member of Performance Studies International, the Association for Art History and Historical Materialism's Sexuality and Political Economy Network.
I welcome PhD proposals aligned in any way with my research and/or the following areas:
- Gender and sexuality in performance and visual culture
- Contemporary queer and trans performance and visual cultures
- Interdisciplinary research between performance studies and art history
- Aesthetic and critical theory
- Archives, oral history and historiography of art and performance
- Violence, endurance, and pain in performance
Books
- (In preparation) Legal Aesthetics: Sexual Intimacy in Art and Performance
- (Forthcoming 2026) Dirty Queers (Serpent's Tail)
Journal Articles
- White, Bryony, ‘Returning to the Scene of the Crime: Gendered and Racialized in Ana Mendieta’s Rape Scene’, Art Journal, 82.2 (2023) 68–81.
- White, Bryony, ‘The Star of the Show: Trademark, Theatricality and “The Grandmother of Performance Art”’, Performance Research, 24.4 (2019), 53–62. https://doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2019.1641324
Reviews
- White, Bryony, ‘Theatre, Exhibition, and Curation: Displayed & Performed by Georgina Guy (review)’, Theatre Journal, 69.3 (2017), 436–437. https://doi:10.1353/tj.2017.0057
Selected Journalism
- White, Bryony, ‘Sharon Hayes and Speaking Through Love’, (essay), Tate Etc, Issue 55, Summer 2022.
- White, Bryony, ‘Come as Softy’, monthly column for online and print magazine Elephant on visual art and pleasure, September 2020–December 2021.
- White, Bryony, ‘Cleaning Up Their Act: Are Beauty Products Sanitising Radical Art?’ (essay), Elephant, 20th August 2021.
- White, Bryony, ‘The Untold Queer History of California’ (exhibition review), frieze, 24th June 2019.
- White, Bryony, ‘Performance Anxiety’ (essay), Art Monthly, Issue 426, May 2019.
- White, Bryony, ‘Queering the Rural’ (essay), Hazlitt, July 26th
- White, Bryony, ‘Cloud with its Shadow: Marina Abramovic’s Walk Through Walls’, (book review), Los Angeles Review of Books, 7th December 2016.
Editorship
- I am currently editor for the peer-reviewed journal, Studies in Theatre and Performance (2022—present)
- White, Bryony and Greer, Stephen (eds), Now / Not Now (Live Art in Scotland, University of Glasgow, June 2022)
- White, Bryony and Greer, Steve, Live Art Scotland Practitioner Directory, Finding Aid (Live Art in Scotland, University of Glasgow, February 2022) https://doi.org/pubs.265874
- 2017–2021: White, Bryony and Jones, Eleanor, close, an online newsletter featuring writing from Helen Charman, Nina Mingya Powles, Lola Olufemi, Nisha Ramayya, Jesse Darling and Bridget Minamore.