VK Preston

VK Preston is Assistant Professor of History at Concordia University. Their research draws from approaches in performance historiography with particular focus on dance. VK works across histories of the performing arts in order to address cultural histories of practice, embodiment, and stigma. This research analyses histories of the emotions and the senses in intersectional analyses of race, gender, disability, and cultural privilege.

VK comes to performance scholarship by way of practice, following professional training in dance and theatre. Their work draws from approaches in performance studies and historiography through early modern critical race studies, movement, and gender studies. Dr. Preston’s writing appears in Theatre Journal, The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Reenactment, Performance Research, TDR/The Drama Review, The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Theatre, Canadian Theatre Review, and History, Memory, Performance. VK’s current writing projects include studies of art and performance entangled with the colonial invasion of the Americas, from baroque performance to contemporary visual and performance art. Their approaches engage with histories of the Atlantic world, and of Turtle Island, addressing genealogies of racial capitalism, decolonization, non-binary gender, historical memory, and translation. They are currently working on their first monograph.