Teresa Simone

Instructional Assistant Professor of Theatre Studies

Teresa Simone is very happy to join the theatre faculty at the University of Mississippi. Teresa has a PhD in Theatre from Florida State University, where she was a Legacy Fellow. She has won several awards for her research, including the Southeastern Theatre Conference’s Young Scholars Award, a PEO Scholar Award, and the American Society for Theatre Research’s Helen Krich Chinoy Dissertation Fellowship. Teresa’s research examines nationalist pageantry, emphasizing how women’s and children’s pageant performances model ideal citizenship and shape cultural beliefs about the nation. 

Before receiving her PhD, Teresa had a long career as a teaching artist promoting community cultural development. She specializes in physical theatre, devised theatre, and site-specific performance. Teresa worked with the educational theatre Stories That Soar from 2003-2013 as an actor/director, creating original theatre from stories written by children, to increase community literacy. As the Education Director, she taught playwriting to about 1000 students annually, working with communities to create theatre telling their own stories. 

Teresa holds an MA in Gender Studies with a concentration in Performance Studies from the University of Arizona, and a Professional Training Certificate from the Dell’Arte International School for Physical Theatre. She has trained with Augusto Boal, the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and Cornerstone Theatre, among others.