Meenakshi Ponnuswami

Meenakshi Ponnuswami

Associate Professor of English
Affiliated Faculty in Critical Black Studies and Theatre & Dance; Specialization: Modern Drama and Ethnic Comedy.
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Meenakshi Ponnuswami came to Bucknell in 1991 right after earning her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her scholarship focuses on Black British and British Asian playwrights and the theatre of the Black Power era. Her research has been published in journals such as Contemporary Theatre Review, The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, and Women and Performance and in essay collections from Cambridge, Routledge, Palgrave, and MLA. Her current research interests involve South Asian American drama and British Asian comedy. Professor Ponnuswami teaches courses on modern drama, social justice, and ethnic comedy. She has been honored to receive a Posse mentorship (2021-25), the Bucknell Writing Across the Curriculum Award of Excellence (2018), and the Burma Bucknell Award (2025). 

Education

  • B.A. (English Hons), St. Stephens College, University of Delhi, India
  • M.A in English, University of Delhi, India
  • Ph.D. in English, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Teaching Interests

  • Theatre and the Black Power Movement
  • Masculinity in Modern American Performance
  • Foundation Seminar: Whose Story Is History?
  • Ethnic Comedy

Scholarly Interests

  • Postwar British and American theatre
  • Black British and British Asian playwrights
  • Ethnic Comedy

Recent and Representative Publications

"Alice Childress (1916-1994)." In The Routledge Anthology of Women's Theatre Theory and Dramatic Criticism. Eds. J. Ellen Gainor and Catherine Burroughs. London: Routledge, 2023: 285-293. (Recipient of a George Freedley Memorial Award, 2023).

"Blackface in the Comedy Class." In Teaching Comedy. Ed. Bev Hougue. New York: Modern Languages Association, 2023: 38-45.

“Alia Bano’s Shades.” Contemporary Women Playwrights. Eds. Lesley Ferris and Penelope Farfan. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2021.

"Taking the Stage: Black and Asian Theatre in Britain." The Cambridge History of Black and Asian British Writing. Eds. Sheila Nastase and Mark U. Stein. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2020: 368-385.

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