Joshua Bastian Cole holds a BA in Theatre & Dance from James Madison University and an MA in Theatre History and Criticism from CUNY, Brooklyn College. His current research interests encompass transgender and queer performance and spectatorship theory; feminist, cyborg, disability and Deaf theatre; puppetry and performing objects; phenomenology and embodied practice.
Cole’s publications include essays in the anthologies Trans Forming Families, Beyond Masculinity, and Visible: A Femmethology. As a social critic, Cole has been featured in Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, HowlRound, Bust, Autostraddle, Out Magazine, Original Plumbing, The Daily Beast, Time Out New York, London Metro, and Jacob Anderson-Minshall’s syndicated column: Trans Nation. An early version of Cole’s paper, “Cyborg Alice: Cyborgs and Erin Courtney’s The Service Road” was published in the online contemporary performance journal, Signals and was later presented at the Midwest Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference (MIGC).Cole frequently presents at theatre and interdisciplinary conferences and has been a panelist at the Festival of Original Theatre (FOOT), the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE), the Congress on Research in Dance (CORD), and the Comparative Drama Conference. He is currently a committee member for the 2016 conference of the American Society for Theatre Research(ASTR).
Upon completing his MA, Cole taught in the Department of Speech, Communication, and Theatre Arts at CUNY, Borough of Manhattan Community College. He also lectured in the Communication Department at SUNY Plattsburgh, teaching both Intro and Advanced Public Speaking as well as Mass Media and Society.
Preferred name: Cole
Preferred Gender Pronouns: he/him/his
Cole’s website: joshuabastiancole.weebly.com