Critical Dreaming: Feminist Performances across the Indigenous Americas

Lilian Mengesha

This talk will detail insights from Dr. Mengesha’s new book Critical Dreaming: Feminist Performances Across the Indigenous Americas, which is a transnational study of Indigenous artists that stages the urgency of embodied ways of knowing amidst the colonial decimation of culture, life, and land. In the 1990s, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), and US and Canadian boarding/residential schools’ practices led to an increase in cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women from the US-Mexico border, Guatemala, Canada, and the United States. Indigenous artists aiming to recontextualize these state-sponsored instances of violence created works grappling with time, ancestry, and relationality. Dr. Mengesha interprets the works of these artists’ Indigenous contexts through an aesthetic frame she calls “critical dreaming.”

Using methods from performance studies, gender studies, and Indigenous studies, Critical Dreaming considers artists as expert world makers. Dr. Mengesha examines selected works by Lara Kramer, Regina José Galindo, Rebecca Belmore, Monique Mojica, LeAnne Howe, and Sky Hopinka, demonstrating how each materializes alternative modes of experiencing time, making kin, and communing with land. Revealing the long and interconnected patterns of feminicide across the Americas, the talk will detail how contemporary feminist artists use performance to sustain life amid devastating attempts at extermination.

Lilian Mengesha is an Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies, and Affiliate faculty in the Department of Studies in Race, Colonialism and Diaspora at Tufts University which occupies Massachusett and Nipmuc territories. Her research and teaching live at the intersection of critical Indigenous studies, gender and sexuality studies and performance studies. Her talk will draw from her first book, Critical Dreaming: Feminist Performances Across the Indigenous Americas (NYU Press, 2025). You can find her other writing in the Journal for Dramatic Theory and Criticism, ASAP Journal, Canadian Theatre Review and The Drama Review. In addition to research and teaching, Dr. Mengesha is a director and dramaturge for experimental performance and new works.

Part of “Transversal Re/Configurations: Flesh, Bodies, and Matter in Motion”

Current Topics in Dance Research Colloquium Series: January 08 - March 12, 2026

– María Regina Firmino-Castillo, Curator & Coordinator 

Transversal Re/Configurations: Flesh, Bodies, and Matter in Motion was made possible through generous sponsorships from the California Center for Native Nations; the Rupert Costo Endowment in American Indian Affairs, University of California, Riverside; the CHASS Dean's Office and the Center for Ideas and Society; and the Departments of Music, Ethnic Studies, Gender & Sexuality Studies, and Media & Cultural Studies.

Many thanks to: taisha paggett (Department of Dance, Chairperson), Anthea Kraut (Department of Dance, Vice-Chair), Courtney Brubaker (Events Specialist), and Pete Pace (Technical Director) for their generous support of the Colloquium, and to Jonathan Ritter (Department of Music, Chairperson) and María del Rosario Acosta López (Professor, Hispanic Studies Department) for their vision and collaboration.

For Accessibility and Accommodations, contact mariafc@ucr.edu 

Photo credits: 

Photo of Lily Mengesha by María Fernanda Sánchez.

Photo of book cover, New York University Press.

Download the poster here [LINK COMING SOON]

Parking Information

Step 1: Click Here

Step 2: Enter your license plate in the “License Plate Number”

Step 3: If the plate is non-California, select the appropriate state for the plate.

Step 4: Press ‘Park’