Adjunct Lecturer in Theatre & Performance | Scholar-Practitioner in Performance and Cultural Studies

Alyssa Kitt Hanley is a burlesque historian, cultural critic, award-winning performer, and PhD candidate in Theatre & Performance at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her feminist performance research spans embodiment, performance history, media cultures, and practice-based pedagogy, with extensive experience in advising, dramaturgy, and interdisciplinary mentorship. Her dissertation, Deviant Stages: Politics of Subcultural Performance from DIY to Mainstream, examines how body-based performance subcultures—burlesque, freak show genealogies, sideshow, queer BDSM performance, and disability arts—operate as political sites of resistance and how their radical potential is reshaped through professionalization and market visibility. Director of the Australian Burlesque Museum and National Associate Producer of Mx Burlesque Australia, she researches erotic performance, dramaturgy, and disability in performance. As a proudly self-identified “Disa-burly-teaser,” her activism focuses on access, equity, and the redistribution of cultural legitimacy within global burlesque infrastructures.