Research Bio
Shannon Jackson is the Cyrus and Michelle Hadidi Professor of the Arts & Humanities, Department Chair of History of Art, and former Associate Vice Chancellor for the Arts + Design. She also recently assumed leadership of the Environmental Arts & Humanities Initiative for UC Berkeley. Jackson’s research focuses on two overlapping domains: 1) collaborations across visual, performing, and media art forms and 2) the role of the arts in social institutions and in social change. Her most recent books are Back Stages: Essays Across Art, Performance, and the Social (Northwestern University Press, 2022), and The Human Condition: Media Art from the Kramlich Collection (Thames & Hudson, 2022). Her previous books include The Builders Association: Performance and Media in Contemporary Theater (M.I.T. Press, 2015), Public Servants: Art and the Crisis of the Common Good, co-edited with Johanna Burton and Dominic Willsdon (M.I.T. Press, 2016), Social Works: Performing Art, Supporting Publics (Routledge, 2011), Lines of Activity: Performance, Historiography, and Hull-House Domesticity (2000) and Professing Performance: Theatre in the Academy from Philology to Performativity (2004). Other collaborative projects include the guest-edited Valuing Labor in the Arts with Art Practical; a special issue of Representations on time-based art (with Julia Bryan-Wilson); In Terms of Performance, an online platform of keywords in experimental art and performance created with the Pew Center for Art & Heritage; and Media Art 21, an online database and exhibition platform, co-edited with Zhang Ga and Rudolf Frieling. Recently, she hosted Relevance of Place a series of online, site-specific dialogues about art, ethics, and landscape at Tippet Rise Art Center.
Research Expertise and Interest
rhetoric, performance studies, American studies, 20th century art movements and critical theory, local culture and intercultural citizenship in turn-of-the-century United States, history and theory of theatre and performance art
In the News
Executive Actions Aim To Reshape America’s Cultural Institutions
No artist is an island, says faculty author Shannon Jackson
Art that looks directly at the institutions that, for better or for worse, surround and support our lives is the subject of a new book, “Social Works: Performing Art, Supporting Publics,” by Shannon Jackson, professor of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies
Featured in the Media
In this episode of Relevance of Place, Ronald Rael, Chair of Art Practice and Eva Li Memorial Chair in Architecture, shares how Indigenous perspectives on land and materials shape his innovative work, emphasizing the interplay between art, design, and site history.
Relevance of Place (above) is an online series at Tippet Rise Art Center, Fishtail, Montana, where art, music, architecture, and nature converge to elevate the human experience. Hosted by Shannon Jackson, Chair of History of Art and Hadidi Professor of Rhetoric & Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies, the series unites artists, architects, and thinkers to explore the ethics, aesthetics, and significance of place—locally and globally.