Maria De Simone specializes in U.S. American theater and ethnic performance, with interests in immigration and transnational studies, critical race theory, and comedy studies. She received her Doctorate from Northwestern University's Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Theatre and Drama program (IPTD) and came to MIT in 2022 following a term as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Brown University’s Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women. Prior to her academic activities, Maria was a dancer and theater production manager in Rome, Italy, her country of origin.
Maria’s current book project, Hyphen-Nation: Racial Impersonation and the Performance of Hyphenated Americanness, explores how American immigrant entertainers have used the genre of racial impersonation to articulate new meanings of hyphenated identity. Maria’s academic research has been honored with grants and awards from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and The Buffett Institute for Global Affairs. Her work appears in Theatre Journal; Theatre Topics; Theatre Research International; Women’s Innovations in Theatre, Dance, and Performance (Bloomsbury); and Researching Popular Entertainment (Routledge). Her first book, Three Loves for Three Oranges: Gozzi, Meyerhold, Prokofiev (2021) was co-edited with Dassia N. Posner and Kevin Bartig and published by Indiana University Press.