Rate My Professor Analola Santana

Analola Santana (she/her/ella) is Chair of the Department of Theater and Associate Professor in Theater at Dartmouth College, with affiliated faculty status in Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine. Her research focuses on contemporary Latin American theatre and performance, Latinx theatre and performance, performance and politics, and mass and popular culture. She teaches courses on Latin American and Latinx theatre and performance. Hailing from Puerto Rico and raised in Mexico City, Santana examines how theatre illuminates political and cultural dynamics in Latin America.

Santana authored Teatro y Cultura de Masas: Encuentros y Debates (Editorial Escenología, 2010), analyzing mass media's influence on theatre in Mexico, Argentina, and Chile, and Freak Performances: Dissidence in Latin American Theatre (University of Michigan Press, 2018), which investigates the "freak" figure as a medium for exploring colonialism's ongoing impact on Latin American identity. She co-edited Theatre and Cartographies of Power: Repositioning the Latina/o Americas (Southern Illinois University Press, 2018, with Jimmy Noriega); Fifty Key Figures in Latinx and Latin American Theatre (Routledge, 2022, with Paola Hernández); Monsters in Performance: Essays on the Aesthetics of Social Disqualification (Routledge, 2022, with Michael Chemers); The Figure of the Monster in Global Theatre (Routledge, 2024, with Michael Chemers); and Freak Inheritance: Eugenics and Extraordinary Bodies in Performance (Oxford University Press, 2024, with Rosemarie Garland-Thomson and Michael Chemers). Her articles appear in Theatre Journal, Latin American Theatre Review, Chasquí, Theatre Topics, and others. A professional dramaturg and company member of Mexico's Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes, she has worked on productions like El ultimo sueño de Frida y Diego (2022). In 2023-2024, she received a Hopkins Center Arts Integration Initiative Grant for "Fighting Invisibility: Feminist Performance and Denouncement in Mexico," studying artivism against femicide.