John Muse

John Muse is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 2010. His work bridges theater and performance studies, media studies, and modern/contemporary literature through investigations of theatrical boundaries and para-theatrical practices.

Education:

• Ph.D., Yale University, 2010

Professor Muse specializes in examining theater through marginal cases including microdramas (sub-20-minute plays), virtual theater, and hybrid art forms. His research reveals how extreme brevity or digital mediation exposes theater's core mechanics regarding time, spectatorship, and significance. The book Microdramas: Crucibles for Theater and Time analyzes Strindberg, Beckett, and others to demonstrate how short plays intensify theatrical experience, while his current project Theater and the Virtual explores connections between traditional theater and algorithmic performances, VR, and social media.

Advising: Professor Muse has supervised doctoral dissertations on stuck time in modernism and Beckett, master's theses on Twitter performances and postdramatic Hamlet stagings, and BA theses covering durational performance, decomposition in Beckett, and post-internet literature. His courses include Intro to Drama and The World's a Stage: Performance in Culture, Politics and Everyday Life.