Douglas A Jones Jr.
Associate Professor of Theater Studies
Douglas Jones has wide-ranging interests in (African) American literatures of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, performance studies, and political theory. He is writing a book called "Pragmatics of Democracy: A Political Theory of African American Literature before Emancipation," which details early black writers' contributions to democratic theory. Professor Jones is also working on another book project for a general audience on the complicated history of black minstrelsy. He recently completed a new collection of the political philosopher Maria W. Stewart's writings for Oxford University Press (2023).
Professor Jones is the author of The Captive Stage: Performance and the Proslavery Imagination of the Antebellum North (2014) and editor or co-editor of three books, including Race and Performance after Repetition (2020) which won the 2021 Errol Hill Award from the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) for best book in black theater and performance studies. His essays have appeared in American Literature , American Literary History , and Theatre Journal , among many other journals and edited collections. One of his essays, "The Black Below: Minstrelsy, Satire, and the Threat of Vernacularity," won ASTR's Oscar G. Brockett prize (2022) for best essay on any subject in the field of theater and performance studies.
Professor Jones sits on the editorial boards of American Literature and Modern Drama . He is a long-time faculty member of the Bread Loaf School of English, where he has held the Frank and Eleanor Griffiths Chair, and is a former fellow of the Princeton Society of Fellows. He currently holds the Thomas Langford Lectureship here at Duke.
Outside the academy, Professor Jones' work has been featured in the Times Literary Supplement , The New York Times , PBS , and elsewhere.
Professor Jones is the author of The Captive Stage: Performance and the Proslavery Imagination of the Antebellum North (2014) and editor or co-editor of three books, including Race and Performance after Repetition (2020) which won the 2021 Errol Hill Award from the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) for best book in black theater and performance studies. His essays have appeared in American Literature , American Literary History , and Theatre Journal , among many other journals and edited collections. One of his essays, "The Black Below: Minstrelsy, Satire, and the Threat of Vernacularity," won ASTR's Oscar G. Brockett prize (2022) for best essay on any subject in the field of theater and performance studies.
Professor Jones sits on the editorial boards of American Literature and Modern Drama . He is a long-time faculty member of the Bread Loaf School of English, where he has held the Frank and Eleanor Griffiths Chair, and is a former fellow of the Princeton Society of Fellows. He currently holds the Thomas Langford Lectureship here at Duke.
Outside the academy, Professor Jones' work has been featured in the Times Literary Supplement , The New York Times , PBS , and elsewhere.
Current Appointments & Affiliations
- Associate Professor of Theater Studies, Theater Studies, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2022
- Associate Professor of English, English, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2022
- Associate Professor of African & African American Studies, African & African American Studies, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2022
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