Summer Kim Lee and Uri McMillan are challenging their students’ conceptions of theory, expression and performance, one classroom discussion at a time.
Drawing from their backgrounds in performance studies, the UCLA English professors encourage their students to find relevance in writing and performance whether the material is from 2025 or decades ago.
In this conversation, the two faculty members reflect on a few of their teaching strategies, such as staging debates, encountering historical texts or using contemporary pop culture as a bridge to theory. They also share how they aim to build critical skills for the real world.
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Uri McMillan: I think Summer and I kind of teach in a similar way. I like to give students a concrete concept and then show them different ways to interpret it. So when I bring in an older piece of writing, I might stage a debate and ask them, “Okay, what’s your interpretation of this? Do you agree with the older view or the new one?”
For example, both of us teach Peggy Phelan’s “Unmarked,” a foundational performance studies text. I’ll ask, “Do you think performance only exists in the present moment? Or does it persist afterward?” Usually, everyone leans toward the latter, but the exercise gets them invested. You kind of have to trick them into caring sometimes.
Summer Kim Lee: When we teach performance theory or theory in general, it shifts how we view historical time. You want students to see how the stakes of a concept change as it moves through time. Even contemporary work needs to be historicized.
I taught a seminar on negative affect — bad feelings in queer and feminist theory — and a big part of that was explaining how much of that theory came out of the need to better understand and give language to one’s personal experience in the context of, for example, the women’s movement and the AIDS crisis.
These feelings of grief, anger, mourning: They aren’t just abstract, nor are they only private and individualized. They’re grounded in real, historical moments of frustration and devastation and can be collectively transmitted and felt.
Read the full conversation.
Photo credit: Amelia Golden (Lee), DAG Images (McMillan), UCLA Humanities (composite)