Dr. Diana Benea is Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of Bucharest, Romania, and a former Fulbright Senior Scholar at the City University of New York - The Graduate Center (2017-2018). At the University of Bucharest she teaches self-designed courses in 20th and 21st century US literature, methodologies in cultural studies, and contemporary theater.

She has published a monograph on Thomas Pynchon’s works based on her doctoral dissertation, as well as articles and book chapters on contemporary theater practices in the US and Romania. Her current research focuses on the theory, praxis, and pedagogy of theater for social change, particularly documentary and community-based formats. She is currently completing a book manuscript on reframing citizenship and community in the recent theater of undocumentedness.

At the University of Bucharest, she has organized the Theater Conversations series of guest talks with theater artists and scholars since 2018.

Recent publications:

Edited special issue

Staging Crisis in Contemporary North American Theater and Performance. Special Issue of American, British and Canadian Studies, edited by Felicia Hardison Londré, Diana Benea, and Ludmila Martanovschi, Vol. 39, December 2022. [Web of Sciences – Emerging Sources Citation Index].

Articles and book chapters

• “Staging Undocumented Motherhood in Quiara Alegría Hudes and Erin McKeown’s Miss You Like Hell.” (M)other Perspectives: Staging the Maternal in 21st Century North American Theatre & Performance, edited by Aoise Stratford and Lynn Deboeck, Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies Series, Routledge, 2023, pp. 158-172. ISBN 9781032303116. DOI: 10.4324/9781003304463-16. 

• “Saviana Stănescu: Pentru o poetică a hibridității culturale.” Critical introduction to Pentru o femeie barbară, by Saviana Stănescu, trans. Diana Benea, Tracus Arte, 2023, pp. 5-24. ISBN 978-606-023-483-8.

• “Thomas Pynchon.” Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction: 1980-2020, edited by Patrick O’Donnell, Stephen Burn, and Lesley Larkin, Wiley-Blackwell, 2022, pp. 1130-1136. ISBN13 9781119431718; ISBN10 1119431719.  DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119431732.ecaf0208.

• “Producing Community: A Process-Oriented Analysis of Ping Chong + Company’s Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ (2018).” American Dramaturgies for the 21st Century, edited by Julie Vatain-Corfdir, Sorbonne Université Presses, 2021, pp. 217-242. ISBN 979-10-231-1793-6.

• “Representing the Roma Experience on the Contemporary Romanian Stage: The Intersectional Lenses of Giuvlipen’s Anti-Racist and Feminist Theatre Works.” The Palgrave Handbook of Theatre and Race, edited by Tiziana Morosetti and Osita Okagbue, Palgrave Macmillan, 2021, pp. 101-120. ISBN: 978-3-030-43956-9. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43957-6_6.

• “Reframing Borders: Acts of Citizenship and Modes of Belonging in the Recent U.S. Theater of Undocumentedness.” Representations and Images of Frontiers and Borders: On the Edge, edited by Katarzyna Nowak-McNeice and Alejandra María Aventín Fontana, Cambridge Scholars, 2021, pp. 1-19. ISBN13: 978-1-5275-7608-7.

• “‘What’s in a Name?’ The Institutionalization of American Studies in Romania.” Special issue on American, Latin American, and Canadian Studies in Central and Eastern Europe, edited by Łukasz Wordliczek, Ad Americam: Journal of American Studies, Vol. 21, 2020, pp. 31-48. DOI: https://doi.org/10.12797/AdAmericam.21.2020.21.02

Reviews

• Review of Yuko Kurahashi, The Interdisciplinary Theatre of Ping Chong: Exploring Curiosity and Otherness on Stage (McFarland, 2020). Dance Research Journal, vol. 55, no. 3, December 2023. [ISI-AHCI].
• Review of Albert Rolls, Thomas Pynchon: The Demon in the Text (Edward Everett Root Publishers, 2019). Orbit: A Journal of American Literature, vol. 10, no. 1, 2022, pp. 1-8. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16995/orbit.4810 [SCOPUS, Open Library of the Humanities - Cambridge].

// RO:

Diana Benea este lector dr. la Departamentul de Engleză al Facultății de Limbi și Literaturi Străine din cadrul Universității din București, unde predă cursuri de literatură americană (secolele XX-XXI), teatru contemporan și metodologii în studiile culturale/studiile americane.

Publicațiile ei includ o monografie intitulată The Political Imagination of Thomas Pynchon's Later Novels (Ars Docendi - Universitatea din București, 2017) și capitole despre opera aceluiași autor în The Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction (Wiley-Blackwell, 2022), A Dark California: Essays on Dystopian Depictions in Popular Culture (McFarland, 2017) și Placing America: American Culture and Its Spaces (Transcript Verlag, 2014). In ultimii ani, cercetarea ei s-a reorientat spre teatrul contemporan, prin publicarea de capitole invitate în volume internaționale precum The Palgrave Handbook of Theatre and Race (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), American Dramaturgies for the 21st Century (Sorbonne Université Presses, 2021), Representations and Images of Frontiers and Borders: On the Edge (Cambridge Scholars, 2021) și (M)Other Perspectives: Staging Motherhood in 21st Century North American Theatre & Performance (Routledge, 2023).

În anul universitar 2017-2018, a fost bursier Fulbright Senior Scholar la the City University of New York (CUNY) - The Graduate Center, cu un proiect postdoctoral despre teatrul comunitar contemporan din Statele Unite. În prezent, finalizeaza o monografie despre acest subiect. Din 2018, organizează la Universitatea din București Theater Conversations, o serie de conferințe și ateliere cu artiști și cercetători din domeniul teatral.

În 2020 a obtinut o bursă de cercetare postdoctorală la Eccles Center for American Studies, Londra.