Kristin Perkins is a Ph.D. candidate in Theatre and Performance at Columbia University with a certificate from the Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender. Her current work is at the intersections of performance studies, American religious history, material and spatial theory, and the study of secularism. She is particularly interested in what happens when theatrical practices inhabit spaces structured by ritual, religious authority, and collective memory.
Her dissertation, Altaring Stages, examines theatre staged inside American churches in the twentieth century. Moving across Black church pageants, experimental dance in New York, Chicano activist performance, and evangelical megachurch drama ministry, the project asks how the sanctuary shapes the interpretive possibilities of theatrical events and how theatre becomes a method of redistributing religious authority. Mobilizing archival research, performance histories, architectural analysis, and interviews, the dissertation traces the reciprocal relationship between worship and theatre, developing a post-secular critique of performance studies’ foundational investments in the categories of ritual and theatre as either oppositional or collapsed.
Kristin’s scholarship has appeared in Theatre Topics, Ecumenica, SFRA Review, and Borrowers and Lenders. She has also written the “This Month in Theatre History” column for American Theatre magazine and book reviews for Publishers Weekly. She has taught and guest lectured on performance theory, theatre history, and writing at Columbia, the University of Washington, the University of Texas at Austin, and Sungkyunkwan University in Korea. While at Columbia, she has also worked as a teaching assistant, research assistant, rapporteur, Writing Center consultant, and dramaturg. Between degrees, she programmed events for a rural public library and farmed at a subsistence-based monastery.
Kristin holds master’s degrees from Columbia University and the University of Texas at Austin. She was a 2025 Eugene England Fellow, a 2020 Fulbright grantee, and a 2018 Emerging Scholar in Theatre and Religion (ATHE). Her broader interests include child labor in theatre, adaptations of Shakespeare, performances of prayer in political contexts, and representations of queer Mormons. She is an avid board game enthusiast.
You can reach her at k.perkins@columbia.edu.
