Ketu Katrak

Ketu H. Katrak born in Bombay, India, is Professor of Drama at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). She was founding Chair of the Department of Asian American Studies (1996-2004) at UCI, and prior to that has taught at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and Yale University. Katrak has published in the fields of Drama and Performance, African Drama and Ancient Sanskrit Drama (from India), Postcolonial Literature and Theory, Women Writers and Feminist Theory. She is the author of Contemporary Indian Dance: New Creative Choreography in India and the Diaspora (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); Wole Soyinka and Modern Tragedy: A Study of Dramatic Theory and Practice; and of Politics of the Female Body: Postcolonial Women Writers of the Third World among other co-edited books and essays published in journals such as Modern Fiction Studies, Journal of Asian Studies among others. Katrak is on the Fulbright Specialist Roster (2010-2015). She is the recipient of a Fulbright Research Award to India (2005-06), a Bunting Institute Fellowship (Harvard/Radcliffe, 1988-89), among other awards. She worked as dramaturg for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's (OSF) production of the Ancient Sanskrit drama, The Clay Cart (2007), and for OSF's Education office for their production of Nigerian Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka's drama, Death and the King's Horseman (2008). Katrak delivers talks in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's Noon Series--On Julia Cho's The Language Archive (2010); and on Medea/Macbeth /Cinderella (2011).