National Advisory Board

Shannon Jackson

On leave 2019-2020

Shannon Jackson is the Associate Vice Chancellor for the Arts + Design at UC Berkeley where she is also the Cyrus and Michelle Hadidi Professor of Rhetoric and of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies. Jackson’s research focuses on two broad, overlapping domains 1) collaborations across visual, performing, and media art forms and 2) the role of the arts in social institutions and in social change. Her most recent books are The Builders Association: Performance and Media in Contemporary Theater (M.I.T. Press, 2015) and Public Servants: Art and the Crisis of the Common Good, co-edited with Johanna Burton and Dominic Willsdon (M.I.T. Press 2016).  Other recent projects include the guest-edited Valuing Labor in the Arts with Art Practical, a special issue of Representations on time-based art, and a new online platform of keywords in experimental art and performance, created in collaboration with the Pew Center for Art and Heritage, In Terms of Performance.  Jackson’s writing has also appeared in dozens of museum catalogues, journals, blogs, and edited collections and she sits on the boards of many Bay Area, national, and international arts organizations. Before moving to UC-Berkeley in 1998, Jackson received a B.A. in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University (1989), a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from Northwestern University (1995), and served as an assistant professor of English and Literature at Harvard University from 1995 to 1998.