SBP | Scholar & Theatre Director
Welcome! I'm Sarah Berry Pierce (double first name, they/she). I'm a scholar and theater director whose practice and research centers on fat femme performance, fat girlhood, disability studies, and queering social performances of fatphobia. I'm a second-year PhD Student in Theatre and Performance Studies at Tufts University. Interested in studying and re-orienting representations of fat bodies on the stage and screen, I examine the ways that theatricality has shaped the unique, embodied subject experiences of fat girls. I have presented my work at the American Society for Theatrical Research, was a panelist at the NYU Performance Studies Graduate Symposium and have directed for Tufts’ Children’s Theater. I received my BA from Vassar College in May 2022, with Honors in Women’s Studies and Drama, and completed my MA in Performance Studies at NYU Tisch School of the Arts in 2023. Originally from Mississippi, I aim to draw on my experiences as a queer, fat person raised in the South to inform my approach to the intersections between fat studies and performance studies.
Education
2024 - Present
Tufts University
2022 - 2023
New York University
Ph.D. Student, Tufts University, Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies Degree conferral anticipated 2029
M.A., New York University Tisch School of the Arts, Performance Studies
Master’s Thesis: “She’s Not Like the Other Girls”: Queering the Categories and Performances of Fat Girlhood
Advisors: Dr. Barbara Browning and Dr. Karen Shimakawa.
Notable Coursework: Theories of Spectatorship, Reading Art as Confrontation, Queer Theory and Psychoanalysis, Black Performance: Violence, Female Cultural Rebels in Modern Times
2018 - 2022
Vassar College
B.A., Vassar College, Women’s Studies and Drama (Honors)
Thesis in Women’s Studies: “Not Another Cinderella Story: Re-imagining the Princess Through Camp in Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette (2006).”
Advisors: Hiram Perez, Mita Choudhury
Thesis in Direction: Our Dear Dead Drug Lord by Alexis Scheer. Presented by the Experimental Theatre of Vassar College, December 2021.
Advisor: Dr. Amanda Culp and Chris Grabowksi
Fellowships & Awards
2025-2026 Tufts Women’s Center Graduate Fellowship 2023 The Leigh George Odom Memorial Award for Distinguished MA Student, New York University Tisch School of the Arts 2022 Vassar College—Honors in Drama 2022 Vassar College—Honors in Women’s Studies 2022 Eloise Ellery Fellowship for Graduate Study, Vassar College 2021 June Ross Marks ’49 Travel Fund for archival research in Paris, France. 2018-2022 Vassar College Full Tuition Scholarship
Conference Presentations
Conference Planning and Organizing: 2026 - The 15th Annual Tufts University Women’s Center Symposium “Body Language: Rewriting the Gendered Body through Embodied Knowledge, Accessibility, and Fat Resistance” Keynote Speaker: Dr. Caleb Luna Papers Presented: 2025 - “Fat Camp: Finding Fat Kinship in Fireside Gatherings,” NYU Tisch Center for Research and Study Graduate Student Conference, New York, NY. Plenary Panel Presentation 2025 - “You’ll grow out of it”: Exploring the Relationship between Fatness and Queer Time in Childhood and Adulthood.” Tufts Theater and Performance Studies Graduate Symposium. 2024 - “You’ll grow out of it”: Exploring the Relationship between Fatness and Queer Time in Childhood and Adulthood.” American Society for Theater Research Conference, Fat Studies Working Group. 2023 - “Making Weigh for the Monster: Examining the Liberatory Power of Fat Performance from Celesta Geyer to Veronika Merklein,” American Society for Theater Research Conference, Providence, Rhode Island. 2023 - “Fearing Fat and Appearing Fat: Performances of Fatphobia, Embodied Fatness, and the Queer Possibilities of Bodily Excess,” UCLA Department of Theater and the Center for Performance Studies Graduate Student Conference, Los Angeles, California. Plenary Panel Presentation 2022 - “Let Them Eat Cake: Marie Antoinette’s Historical Legacy through Aesthetic Theme, Fashion, and Performance.” Harvard National Undergraduate Research Conference, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.