Rate My Professor Amy Steiger

Amy Steiger serves as Associate Professor of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies and Department Chair in the Performing Arts Department at St. Mary's College of Maryland. Originally from Louisville, Kentucky, she obtained her B.A. in Dramatic Arts and English from Macalester College in 1993, followed by an M.A. in Theatre History, Criticism, Theory and Text from the University of Texas at Austin in 2001, and a Ph.D. in Performance as Public Practice from the University of Texas at Austin in 2006. Steiger is a theater artist and scholar whose work emphasizes community-engaged processes and performance as research. She furthered her training by participating in the Cornerstone Theater Company Summer Institute in Los Angeles in 2010. At St. Mary's College of Maryland, she directs student productions and fosters performance-based research in the classroom.

Steiger's academic interests encompass community-based theater and performance, acting and directing, performance theory, critical theory, performance-based research, playwriting, and dramaturgy. Her scholarly contributions include the forthcoming chapter "Stanislavsky, Rose McClendon and Reparations: Whiteness, Professionalization and Reframing Amateurism in the Theater of the United States," published in Stanislavsky and Race: Questioning the "System" in the 21st Century (September 2023). Additional publications feature “Moving Forward, Living Backward, or Just Standing Still?: Newspaper Theatre, Critical Race Theory, and Commemorating the Wade-Braden Trial in Louisville, Kentucky” in the Pedagogy and Theater of the Oppressed Journal; “Whiteness, Patriarchy, and Resistance in Actor Training Texts: Reframing Acting Students as Embodied Critical Thinkers” on HowlRound; and "Paradoxical Sleep and Flights of Imagination: Sleep Rock Thy Brain and the Performance of Research" in the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism. In November 2024, her original monologue was performed as part of "Apron Strings: The Ties That Bind" at the AMT Theater in New York City. Steiger's work has also been recognized through acceptance into the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival Directing Intensive and publications in peer-reviewed journals, contributing to discussions on race, whiteness, and activist performance practices in theater.