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Dr. Mia Levenson is the Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Public Engagement of Science at the University of Cincinnati. Her research examines how popular performance constructed and circulated biomedical knowledge in the 19th and early 20th century United States. Drawing on histories of medicine, science, theatre, and popular media, her work explores how performances of biomedical expertise shaped definitions of race, sexuality, gender, ability, and health status. She has written for Tufts Now, the American Philosophical Society and the Massachusetts Historical Society. You can find her scholarship in Theatre Topics, Theatre Journal, Journal of American Drama and Theatre, and Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism.
She is currently working on her forthcoming book project, Empirical Spectacles: Performing Science in the Age of Eugenics, under contract with Columbia University Press’s Race, Health, and Inequality series. Empirical Spectacles examines how American eugenicists’ public performances of biomedical expertise allowed for increasingly broader audiences to interpret and reproduce eugenics ideology on the stage and screen. Empirical Spectacles argues that these reiterative performances furthered the eugenics project of governance over non-normative bodies and reproductive capacities. In considering how the co-constitutive relationship between bodies and science proliferated through performance, my research decodes narratives around race-making, non-normativity, and biological determinism.
Mia previously held a postdoctoral fellowship in the History of Medicine and Medical Humanities at Johns Hopkins University. Her work has been supported by the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Consortium for History of Science, Technology & Medicine, the Center for the Humanities at Tufts University, and the American Philosophical Society. She received her PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies from Tufts University.
Recently, Mia produced and co-hosted Johns Hopkins University's Center for the Medical Humanities & Social Medicine podcast, “For the Medical Record,” which interviews medical humanities scholars about their work and its connection to contemporary issues in science and medicine. She was was part of the founding team for “Online Research Share,” a digital platform supporting early career scholars in Theatre and Performance Studies by hosting online events, one-on-one mentoring sessions, and videos where faculty share advice and resources related to book publishing, the job market, and professional development.
Mia has instructed courses across disciplines including Theatre, Dance, & Performance Studies, Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies, History of Medicine, Health Humanities, and Social Medicine.
Mia is also a dramaturg and director who has worked with both professional theatre companies and university groups. She specializes in the intersections between science, medicine, and theatre.