Alice Clapié
Alice Clapié is a Ph.D. candidate in Theatre and Performance at Columbia University. Her work is motivated by a historical understanding of the construction of human exceptionalism, from Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man to Union Square’s Climate Clock. She finds theatre a particularly generative medium through which to explore how Western societies have, through embodied performance, upheld and challenged narratives of the human. Her dissertation, The Degenerates Stage: British Theatre at the Fin-de-Siècle, focuses on theatre and the idea of “acting” human after Darwin, in the period between the publication of On the Origin of Species and the First World War. She studies the reciprocal epistemics of theatre and scientific discourses, investigating connections between embodiment, evolution, and spectacle, and the ways science and theatre co-created knowledge in relation to British nationalism and empire. As a teacher, she aims to foster curiosity and intellectual confidence, grounded in a strong sense of community.