Christopher Grobe received his PhD in English from Yale University in 2011. His teaching and scholarship concern “performance” as both a mode of artistic practice and a source of social knowledge.

His book The Art of Confession (NYU Press, 2017) posits “confessional performance” as a major force shaping American culture since the 1950s – not only colonizing one medium after another (poetry, comedy, performance art, theater, reality TV,  and social media), but also transforming the way people artfully shape their lives for the eyes of others.

His other published work similarly pursues “performance” across disciplines and domains. In one area of current research, he asks how ideas, techniques, and people from the arts have shaped the history of technology (e.g., “Every Nerve Keyed Up”) and the present-day practices of the tech industry (e.g., “The Programming Era”). In another area of current research, he seeks to define a “performance literacy” for politics – that is a set of foundational concepts from theater and performance studies that can help us see politics more clearly and act politically with greater purpose (e.g., “The Artist Is President”). He is particularly interested in ideas of political performance that are native to contemporary right-wing politics (see, e.g., “The Deep, Dark Play of the US Capitol Riots”).

He has taught a wide array of courses on subjects ranging from contemporary and modern drama to podcasting, performance studies, apocalyptic theater, poetry performance, archival research, technology in the arts, and the practice of arts criticism.

Before arriving at Johns Hopkins in 2024, he taught for thirteen years at Amherst College, where he also chaired the English department and directed the Center for Humanistic Inquiry.

BOOKS (In-Progress)

• Imitation Games: Acting, A.I., and the Arts of Seeming Human (monograph in progress)
• Performance Literacy for Politics (monograph in progress)

JOURNAL ARTICLES

• "'A Terrible Art of Sharpshooting at the Audience': Teaching the Shock of Modern Drama via the Play of Ideas," Modern Drama 66.2, Special Issue on "Teaching Modern Drama" (June 2023): 158-178 (Link)
• "The Programming Era: The Art of Conversation Design, from ELIZA to Alexa," Post45 (Spring 2023) (Link)
• "The Deep, Dark Play of the US Capitol Riots," Performance Research 27.1, Special Issue "On Protest" (2023) (Link)
• "The Artist Is President: 'Performance Art' and Other Keywords in the Age of Donald Trump," Critical Inquiry (Summer 2020). (Link)
• "On Book: The Performance of Reading," New Literary History 47.4 (Autumn 2016): 567-589. (Link)
• contributor to "A Constellation of Imagined Theatres: Technology and Performance," ed. Daniel Sack, Theatre Journal 68.3 (September 2016): 379-403. (Link)
• "Why It's 'Easier to Act with a Telephone than a Man,'" Theatre Survey 57.2 (May 2016): 175-199. (Link)
• “Every Nerve Keyed Up: 'Telegraph Plays' and Networked Performance, 1850-1900," Theater 46.2 (Spring 2016): 7-33. (Link)
• “The Breath of the Poem: Confessional Print/Performance Circa 1959."  PMLA 127.2 (March 2012): 215-230. (Link)
• “Love and Loneliness: Secular Morality in the Plays of Conor McPherson.” Princeton University Library Chronicle 68.1-2 (2006): 684-704.
  • (excerpted in the Norton anthology of Modern and Contemporary Irish Drama, 563-568)

BOOK CHAPTERS

• “Sound, or, An Essay on 'O'” in Further Reading, ed. Leah Price & Matthew Rubery (Oxford UP, 2020). (Link)
• “Playing with Technodollies: The TV Actress and Other Technologies,” Orphan Black: Performance, Gender, Biopolitics, ed. Andrea Goulet and Robert Rushing (Intellect Books, 2018). (Link)
• contributor to Imagined Theatres: Writing for a Theoretical Stage, ed. Daniel Sack (Routledge, 2017): 140, 192-3, 233. (Link)
• "Advertisements for Themselves: Poetry, Confession, and the Arts of Publicity," American Literature in Transition, 1950-1960, ed. Steven Belletto (Cambridge UP, 2017): 238-250. (Link)
• "From the Podium to the Second Row: The Vanishing Feel of an Anne Sexton Reading" in This Business of Words: Reassessing Anne Sexton, (UP of Florida, 2017): 127-140. (Link) 

EDITORIAL PROJECTS

• "The Anne Sexton Reading Poems" in This Business of Words: Reassessing Anne Sexton, University Press of Florida (2017): 141-154. (Link)
  • A collection of poems sent to Sexton by her fans about the experience of attending her poetry readings.

REVIEWS & OTHER SHORT ESSAYS

• "Can the Computer Speak?" (review of Deceitful Media: Artificial Intelligence and Social Life After the Turing Test and The Computer's Voice: From Star Trek to Siri), American Literature 95.2, Special Issue on "Critical AI: A Field in Formation" (June 2023): 439-443. (Link)
• "Why I'm Not Scared of ChatGPT," essay for The Chronicle of Higher Education, 17 January 2023. (Link)
• Review of Interchangeable Parts: Acting, Industry, and Technology in US Theater, Theatre Journal 73.2 (Summer 2021): 257-8. (Link)
• "How to Resist When Resistance Feels Impossible" (review of The Play in the System: The Art of Parasitical Resistance), Performance Research 25.7 (Spring 2021): 167-8. (Link)
• “The Democratic convention was super awkward,” essay for the Washington Post, 21 August 2020. (Link)
• “Offending the Audience,” essay for the Lights Camera Action Committee, 18 December 2019.
• Review of It's All Allowed: The Performances of Adrian Howells. TDR: The Drama Review 62.1 (Spring 2018): 207-208. (Link)
• "The Case of the Missing Detective: William Gillette's Sherlock Holmes Rediscovered and Restored," Los Angeles Review of Books (January 2016). Online.  (Link)
• Review of Bodies on the Line: Performance and the Sixties Poetry Reading by Raphael Allison, New England Quarterly 88.3 (September 2015): 532-4.  (Link)
• "Hollywood Calling: Luise Rainer, Sally Hawkins, and the First Law of Telephone Scenes," Los Angeles Review of Books (January 2015). Online.  (Link)
• "Lending An Ear," Public Books (May 2014). Online.  (Link)
• "Memoir 2.0; or, Confession Gone Wild," Public Books (March 2013). Online.  (Link)
• Review of American Poetry in Performance: From Walt Whitman to Hip Hop.  Modern Drama 55.4 (Winter 2012): 579-81.
• "Refined Mechanicals; Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Share the Stage: New Scholarship on Theater and Media." Theater 42.2 (May 2012): 139-146. (Link)
• “Canonical Improvisations: The Case of Them.” Theater 41.2 (2011): 5-7. (Link)
• “Twice Real: Marina Abramović and the Performance Archive.” Theater 41.1 (2011): 104-113. (Link)
• The New Haven Independent (head theater critic, 2007-2008)
• The Village Voice (contributing theater critic, 2008-2010)