Megan Lewis

Biography

Megan Lewis is a South African American theatre historian and performance scholar. She is the author of Performing Whitely in the Postcolony (2016, University of Iowa Press) and Magnet Theatre: Three Decades of Making Space (2016, Intellect Books and UNISA Press), which won the Hiddingh-Currie National Book Award in 2018. Lewis has published on African political theatre, film, and performance in Theatre Journal, Performing Arts Journal, Theatre History Studies, Text & Performance, Theatre Topics, and The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism.

Dr. Lewis is a multidisciplinary educator with a passion for inspiring intellectual curiosity and advocating for the performing arts as a powerful force for social activation and change. Her teaching passions include African theatre and film, the politics of performance, non-Western performance traditions, theatre of dissent, the performance of gender (masculinity) and race (whiteness) in South Africa, and white allyship. Prior to joining the faculty at Colorado State University, she taught at the University of Minnesota and UMass Amherst.

Lewis’ accolades include a 2015 Distinguished Teacher Award from UMass Amherst; a national book award; an intensive summer study abroad program – Arts & Culture in South Africa – focused around the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown/Makhanda; and two global teaching voyages for Semester at Sea. She served as Graduate Program director and Multicultural Theater Certificate director at UMass before taking on the exciting new leadership challenge as director of Theatre at CSU.

Lewis believes that with advancement in academics comes a responsibility to give back through visionary leadership. In her role as director of Theatre, Lewis is a champion of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in theatre, and is a passionate advocate for the arts at CSU, encouraging the integration of the “A” in “STEM” to make “STEAM.”