Spencer Golub is the author of seven books--Heidegger and Future Presencing (The Black Pages), (2020); A Philosophical Autofiction: Dolor's Yourth (2019); The Baroque Night (2018); Incapacity: Wittgenstein, Anxiety, and Performance Behavior (2014); Infinity (Stage) (1999); the Callaway award winning The Recurrence of Fate: Theatre and Memory in Twentieth-Century Russia (1994); Evreinov: The Theatre of Paradox and Transformation (1984). He has co-written a novel, part of which has been published in literary print journals and online. His research interests include mise en scene, film, philosophy, Russian theatre, and creative non-fiction.

My current research, which is often a hybrid of different fields, overlaps the disciplines of theatre studies and performance studies, incorporating investigations into cultural performance and event (especially, but not exclusively, in Russian/Soviet contexts) and mental performance and event (cinematic mise en scene as projected mental structures and states); philosophical geographies; anxious behaviors; paranoid storytelling and enactments; the incapacity of the real, the normative, and the representational; fakes and agencies of and for spying and lying; authoritative fictions; and death.

Salomon Grant, Dean of the College's award for course development. Brown University, Winter-Spring, 1996.

Salomon Grant, Dean of the College's award for course development. Brown University, Summer 1989.

National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend (one of two nominated university-wide), Summer 1987.

University of Virginia Summer Research Award, Summer 1987.

National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for Independent Study and Research, Paris, 1986-87.

Research Travel Grant from the University of Virginia Center for Russian and East European Studies for Paris trip, 1/86-6/86.

University of Virginia Sesquecentennial Associateship (competitive, full-time research award), 1985-86.

Summer Research Grant from the University of Virginia Center for Russian and East European Studies to develop a course on the History of Russian Theatre and Drama, 1985.

Foreign Language and Areas Studies (FLAS) Fellowship for the study of Serbo-Croatian, University of Virginia, 6/83-8/83.

National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Fellowship to the Institute on Contemporary East European Drama and Theatre, Center for Advanced Studies in Theatre Arts (CASTA), City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center, New York, NY, June-July 1982.

Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship to the U.S.S.R., 8/75-6/76.

International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) Fellowship: U.S.A.-U.S.S.R. Graduate Student/Young Faculty Exchange, 8/75-6/76.

National Defense Foreign Language Fellowship for the Study of Slavic Languages and Literatures. University of Kansas, 8/73-6/75 (selected first in competition, 8/74-6/75).

Clockwise-Counterclockwise (The Vowelless Revolution)," in Theatre Journal, May 2004.

The Remains of the Day for Night," an invited article to be published in a special edition of the journal Discourse devoted to the theme of "Death and Resurrection." Publication date, 2003.

Atom, Bomb," an invited essay on the theme of "Energy" for the journal Frakcija, published bilingually in Croatia (fall 2001).

Chapter on "Russian Theatre in the Silver Age" in History of the Russian Theatre, Cambridge University Press (1999).

Two Acts of the Illimit," in Of Borders and Thresholds, ed. Michal Kobialka, University of Minnesota Press (1999).

Infinity (Stage). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999.

Moscow Is Watching," in Slavic and East European Performance (spring 1997).

21 new entries plus revisions of my 119 previous entries and addition to my general essay for The Cambridge Guide to Theatre, 2nd edition (1995). Also revisions and additions to the shortened paperback edition of the GUIDE (1995).

[missing]," in The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, December 1995.

The Recurrence of Fate: Theatre and Memory in Twentieth-Century Russia. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1994. Awarded the Joe A. Callaway Prize (1996) by the Departments of English and Drama, New York University, for the best book published in drama and theatre, 1994-95.

A Kiss Is Not A Kiss: Evreinov and the Illusion of Desire," in Wandering Stars: Russian Emigré Theatre, ed. Laurence Senelick, University of Iowa Press, 1993.

The Taganka in the Hamlet Gulag," in Foreign Shakespeare: Essays on Contemporary Performance Outside of English, ed. Dennis Kennedy, London and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Revolutionizing Galatea: Iconic Woman in Early Soviet Culture," in Gender in Performance, ed. Laurence Senelick, University Press of New England, 1992.

The Curtainless Stage and the Procrustean Bed: Socialist Realism and Stalinist Theatrical Eminence," in Theatre Survey, May 1991: 64-84.

O'Neill and the Poetics of Modernist Strangeness," in The O'Neill Century, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1991.

Charlie Chaplin, Soviet Icon," in The Performance of Power: Theatrical Discourse and Politics, ed. Sue-Ellen Case and Janelle Reinelt, University of Iowa Press, 1991.

Russian Theatre and Drama entries (119 individual entries and a general essay--a total of 30,000 words) for The Cambridge Guide to World Theatre. London and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

The Subject Stripped Bare: Rózewicz's 'Things as Things-in-Themselves.'" Slavic and East European Drama and Theatre. Winter/Spring 1985: 23-32.

Evreinov: The Theatre of Paradox and Transformation. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1984.

Nikolai Evreinov." The Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet Literature. Gulf Breeze, Florida: Academic International Press, 1984. Cited in Wolfgang Kasack, Dictionary of Russian Literature, New York: Columbia University Press, 1986.

Mysteries of the Self: The Visionary Theatre of Nikolai Evreinov." Theatre History Studies, vol. II (1982): 15-36.

Le Monodrama, Structure de Base pour l'Etude de Nicolas Evreinov." Nicolas Evreinov L'Apôtre Russe de la Théâtralité. Revue des Etudes Slaves. Paris: L'Institut d'Etudes Slaves (1981): 15-26.

Acting on the Run: Efros and the Contemporary Soviet Theatre," and "Energy, Enervation and the Mathematics of Intrigue," an article and interview, respectively Theatre Quarterly. London: TQ Publications. 26 (Summer 1977): 18-33.

Incapacity: Wittgenstein, Anxiety and Performance Behavior. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press (2014).

The Baroque Night. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press (2018).

Joe A. Callaway Prize (1996) awarded by the Departments of English and Drama, New York University for the best book published in drama and theatre for The Recurrence of Fate: Theatre and Memory in Twentieth-Century Russia (University of Iowa Press, 1994).


Nominated for the University of Virginia's Alumni Board of Trustees Teaching Award. Student nominated. Only one award given university-wide, Spring 1986.

Performance Philosophy

Performance Studies International

The Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE)

The Dramatists Guild

American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR)

International Federation for Theatre Research

"Thought-Experiments in Performance Philosophy," a graduate seminar using Heidegger and Wittgenstein's philosophies to create conceptual research projects and to help explore and articulate a new scholarly and pedagogical field.

"New Theories for a Baroque Stage," a graduate seminar that beginning with seventeenth century baroque philosophy and neoclassical theory and French, Spanish and English dramatic and non-dramatic literature, develops conceptual and material models of a new stage and stage consciousness around the idea of constraints. Readings are drawn from Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, Pascal, Deleuze, Nancy, Racine, Corneille, Moliere, Calderon de la Barca, and more.

"Wittgenstein, Writing and Performance," a graduate seminar that studies Wittgenstein's philosophy for its performative strategies, structures and ideas.

"Abstraction and Resistance," a graduate seminar utilizing surrealist and postmodern strategies to respond creatively to theoretical and stage performances (e.g., Nabokov, Jabès, Bataille, Cioran, Barthes, Bachelard, Foucault, Deleuze, Robbe-Grillet, Resnais, Godard, etc.).

"Mise en scène" This is a mind-reading course taught through full-length films that we watch in class together (an important plot point). You will be asked to re-stage films inside your mind in relation to your thought process, your class readings and, of course, the films themselves and from this to hand in creative projects in any, all and hybridic media based upon what you saw and didn't see, heard and didn't hear, saw and heard in your subconscious mind. As always, the search is on for the stage and the frame in all of their iterations, disguises and overlays, in their unexpectedness.

"Revolution as a Work of Art" A cross-sectional study of Soviet/Russian culture ca. 1890-1939, including readings in and discussion of literature, philosophy, theory, drama, painting, theatrical and cultural mise en scène in Russia.

"Russian Theatre and Drama" (from the eighteenth century to the present)

"Inventing Directing" (Conceptual Performance)