Una Chaudhuri

Ph.D. 1982 (English and comparative literature), M.Phil. 1977, M.A. 1975, Columbia;

M.A. 1973 (English literature), B.A. 1971, Delhi (India).

2015 won a Creative Climate Award from the Human Impacts Institute;
New York University Visual Arts Initiative Awards (with Marina Zurkow), 2009; 2011
HSUS (Humane Society of the United States) Animals and Society Courses Award for the best established course, 2005 (for “Topics in Performance Studies: Animal Rites”); ATHE (American Theatre in Higher Education) Award for Excellence in Editing (2003); ASTR (American Society for Theatre Research) Honorable Mention, Barnard-Hewitt Award for Outstanding Research in Theatre History (1995); New York University’s Distinguished Teaching Medal (1993); Golden Dozen Teaching Award, New York University (1988); Mellon Foundation Presidential Research Fellowship (1986-87); Curricular Development Challenge Fund Grant, New York University (1986-87); Curricular Development Challenge Fund Grant, New York University (1991-92); Presidential Fellowship, Columbia University (1976-77) 

Una Chaudhuri is a Collegiate Professor and Professor of English, Drama, and Environmental Studies at New York University. She is currently the Director of NYU’s XE: Experimental Humanities & Social Engagement. Her current research, teaching, and creative projects explore what she calls “ecospheric consciousness”: ideas, feelings, and practices that attend to the multi-species and geo-physical contexts of human lives. Una Chaudhuri is a pioneer in the field of “eco-theatre”—plays and performances that engage with the subjects of ecology and environment—as well as the related field of ecocriticism, which studies art and literature from an ecological perspective. She helped launch both these fields when she guest-edited a special issue of Yale’s Theater journal on “Theatre and Ecology” in 1994. Her introduction to that issue, entitled “‘There must be a lot of fish in that lake’ Theorizing a Theatre Ecology,” is widely credited as a seminal contribution to the field. Professor Chaudhuri was also among the first scholars of drama and theatre to engage with another rapidly expanding inter-disciplinary field, Animal Studies.  She has written and lectured widely on two concept she has theorized: “zooësis,” the discourse and representation of species in contemporary culture and performance, and “AnthropoScenes,” dramaturgies beyond the human. Professor Chaudhuri participates in collaborative art and research projects, including the on-going multi-platform Dear Climate, which has been featured in exhibitions in Dublin, New York (Storm King Arts Center), New York Public Library, Dumbo Art Festival), the Netherlands, Houston (Rice University).