Surafel Wondimu Abebe

Assistant Professor of Performance Studies and Theory

Abebe studied Literature (BA) and Cultural Studies (MA) at Addis Ababa University (AAU) in 2010. He served as a lecturer, researcher, and Deputy Dean of Humanities at AAU. After completing his Ph.D. in Performance Historiography at the University of Minnesota in 2018, he continued working with AAU as an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Ethiopian Studies, Center for African Studies, and College of Performing and Visual Arts. Additionally, he is a board member of AGITATE, a multi-genre online journal at the University of Minnesota. Currently, he holds the position of Assistant Professor of Performance Studies and Theory at The Africa Institute, Sharjah.

Research

Abebe uses academia, performance, and media as sites of cultural politics from which to interrogate representational practices. Abebe engages with sedimented embodied historiographies in order to understand what it means to be human in the here and now. Currently, he is working on his book project, which studies the ways in which Ethiopian female performers maneuver and reinvent spaces of empires, revolutions, and neoliberal globalization.

Publications

• Eds. Surafel W. Abebe, Anthony Bogues, Leora Farber-Blackbeard, & Zamansele Nsele, The Imagined New: Or, What happens When History is a Catastrophe?. (Johannesburg:  iwalewabooks, 2022)
• "Mindful Space-making: Crossing Boundaries with Ananya Dance Theatre" in Dancing Transnational Feminisms: Ananya Dance Theatre and the Art of Social Justice. Eds. Ananya Chatterjea, Hui Nia Wilcox & Alenssandra Lebea Williams. (Seattle: University of   Washington Press 2022), 127-143.
• "Re-excavating the Present: Inserting Embodied Stories in Ethiopia's Transitional Time- Space" in The Imagined New: Or, What happens When History is a Catastrophe?. Eds. Surafel W. Abebe, Anthony Bogues, Leora Farber-Blackbeard, & Zamansele Nsele.(Johannesburg: Iwalewabooks, 2022).
• "Left Ruins in Ethiopia: Imagining Otherwise Amid Necroempistemic Historiography,"Pamiętni Teatranly, 70, 4 (2021): 161-182.
• “Fractured Threads: Surafel’s Letter to the Class.” AGITATE! 3, (2021).
• “Crossing Boundaries: Reflections on a Festival-Conference.” Horn of Africa Bulletin. Life and Peace Institute (2016).