The performance and pedagogy of neoliberal affect

Editor's Note: Under Mike Sell's excellent editorship, the Critical Stages column in Theatre Survey was developed as a venue for representing current issues for subdisciplinary divisions within the broader field of theatre and performance studies. As the new editor for the column, I hope to build upon Sell's previous editorial work by shifting the form of these short essays in two ways: first, by spotlighting concerns that reach both inside the many corners of our field and outside into a range of broader "publics"; and second, by engaging multiple scholars and artists in "conversations" in order to provide plural perspectives on these concerns. For this first column of my editorship, Eng-Beng Lim, Lisa Duggan, and José Esteban Muñoz track several micro- and macromaneuverings of neoliberalism-from the classroom to the department to the "global university" - and consider how theatre and performance scholars might approach the political difficulties currently threatening the mission of higher education.