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Cheng, Meiling 鄭美玲

Contact Information
Associate Professor, School of Theatre
Office: Drama Center 104
Phone: (213) 740-1496
E-mail: meilingc@usc.edu

Meiling Cheng is Associate Professor of Theatre/Critical Studies and English at the University of Southern California and Director of Critical Studies at USC School of Theatre. She has published and lectured widely on performance art, visual and kinetic theatre, time-based art and site-specific installations. Her book In Other Los Angeleses: Multicentric Performance Art (University of California Press, 2002) deals with minoritarian subject formation and the links between visuality and theatricality in live art activities in Los Angeles. Since 2004, she has published a series of essays on Chinese xingwei yishu (performance art) and xingwei-zhuangzhi (performative installation), including "Clandestine Interventions" (Public Art Review 2004), "Violent Capital: Zhu Yu on File" (TDR 2005), "Extreme Performance and Installation from China" (TheatreForum 2006), "Indexing Death in Seven Xingwei and Zhuangzhi Pieces" (Performance Research 2006), "Animalworks in China" (TDR 2007), "Catalyst, Praxis, Habitat: Performative Objects in Chinese Time-based Art" (Performance Research 2007), "Down and Under, Up and Over: Animalworks by Sun Yuan and Peng Yu" (Performance Paradigm 2008). Most recently, she presented a paper on Chinese multimedia artist Qiu Zhijie's total art project, The Ataraxic of Zhuangzi (2008), in Copenhagen University. Dr. Cheng has received the 2006-07 Zumberge Individual Research Award from USC and the 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship to support the research and writing of her book on contemporary time-based art in China.