Society for Disability Studies

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Bruce Henderson is Professor of Speech Communication and Coordinator of the Program in Culture and Communication and the Minor in Health Communication at Ithaca College. He has his B.S., M.A., and Ph.D. in Performance Studies (formerly Interpretation) from Northwestern University and a Ph.D. in Disability Studies from the University of Illinois at Chicago. His primary teaching areas include performance of literature, folklore and storytelling, health communication, and interdisciplinary courses in disability studies, cultural studies, and aging studies. He is the current Editor in Chief of the premiere scholarly peer-reviewed performance studies journal in the United States, Text and Performance Quarterly, and is co-editor with Noam Ostrander of a forthcoming (January/April 2008) double issue of that journal, devoted to the intersection of performance studies and disability studies. He is co-author (with Carol Simpson Stern) of the textbook Performance: Texta and Contexts (Longman) and is currently under contract with Northwestern University Press, to write a second textbook in Performance Studies (also with Stern), titled Learning to Perform. His previous textbook was the first performance textbook to address disability issues. He has also published widely in such fields as 20th century literature, children's literature, and LGBT/Queer studies. In addition, he is a frequent performer and director. He recently completed a term as Chair of the Performance Studies Division of the National Communication Association.