About

Sara Warner is an Associate Professor of Performing and Media Arts at Cornell University and the current Director of Cornell's LGBT Studies Program. She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Rutgers University. Her academic affiliations include the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, American Studies, Africana Studies, and Visual Studies. Warner's research focuses on the art of activism, examining bodies and the modes of attachment that bind them into various forms of publics and counterpublics through close readings of dramatic literature and live performances, archival research, and theoretical reflection. She explores the forces that mobilize individuals into communities, audiences, and electorates, with particular interest in criminal intimacies and fugitive societies, which are often branded as non-normative but serve to illuminate ideas about emotions, politics, and performance. Her work emphasizes illegitimate theatrical forms and bastardized modes of expression, including melodrama, camp, agit-prop, performance art, and illegal performances such as burlesque and homosexual acts, as well as militant protest modes like guerrilla theater and zap actions. Warner has published widely on theater and performance studies, queer aesthetics, feminism, politics, prisons, and academic labor, and her book, 'Acts of Gaiety: LGBT Performance and the Politics of Pleasure,' received multiple awards and recognitions. She is actively involved in various organizations, has served on multiple boards, and has created public works related to climate change and political protests. Warner's cultural criticism has appeared in media outlets such as Time Magazine and Huffington Post, and she has participated in performance art projects and residencies.

Research topics

• Art
• Sociology
• Aesthetics
• Art history
• Gender studies

Selected publications

• Individualized Sexuality Education for People with Autism Spectrum Disorder

  Education and training in autism and developmental disabilities · 2022-12-01 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  There is a lack of research and program development in the area of sexuality education for those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The prevalence of ASD is on the rise, and research demonstrates that individuals with ASD desire romantic and sexual relationships. It is important that programming targeting sexuality education for individuals with ASD be developed and implemented to better support the unique learning needs associated with ASD. Sexuality education helps promote positive development of one's sexual health, gender awareness, self-advocacy, and self-efficacy. Sexuality education also helps prevent undesirable or unsafe sexual experiences or behaviors and is an important component of every individual's development, well-being, and quality of life. This paper outlines why further development and use of sexuality education materials specific to those with ASD is necessary and summarizes the current literature regarding sexuality education for this population. Lastly, recommendations are provided for the development and/or expansion of current curricula as well as methods of delivery with an exploration of emerging curricula efforts in the field.

  PublisherDOI

• Paula Vogel

  2022-07-12

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Paula Vogel is a Tony Award (Indecent) and Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist (How I Learned to Drive) whose published plays include The Baltimore Waltz; A Civil War Christmas; The Long Christmas Ride Home; Hot ‘N’ Throbbing; Desdemona, A Play About a Handkerchief; The Mineola Twins; And Baby Makes Seven; and The Oldest Profession. Vogel founded and directed the Playwriting program at Brown University (1984–2008) and served as the O’Neill Chair at the Yale School of Drama (2008–2012). Her many accolades include the Dramatists Guild Lifetime Achievement Award, induction into the American Theater Hall of Fame, and three awards named in her honor.

  PublisherDOI

• Jane Chambers

  2022-07-12

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Jane Chambers (1937–1983) was one of the first out lesbian dramatists to write and produce plays about gay women who enjoyed happy, well-adjusted lives. Though she wrote poetry, novels, screenplays, nonfiction, and erotic fiction, Chambers’ reputation rests largely on six lesbian plays she penned during the 1970s and 1980s: A Late Snow (1970), Eye of the Gull (1971), Last Summer at Bluefish Cove (1976), My Blue Heaven (1981), Kudzu (1981), and Quintessential Image (1982). She died of brain cancer at the age of 46 and is honored with several prizes bearing her name, including the Jane Chambers Playwriting Award, administered by the Women and Theatre Program.

  PublisherDOI

• Trends in Clinical Severity of Hospitalized Patients With Coronavirus Disease 2019—Premier Hospital Dataset, April 2020–April 2021

  Open Forum Infectious Diseases · 2021-11-30 · 5 citations

  articleOpen access

  BACKGROUND: Clinical severity of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) may vary over time; trends in clinical severity at admission during the pandemic among hospitalized patients in the United States have been incompletely described, so a historical record of severity over time is lacking. METHODS: We classified 466677 hospital admissions for COVID-19 from April 2020 to April 2021 into 4 mutually exclusive severity grades based on indicators present on admission (from most to least severe): Grade 4 included intensive care unit (ICU) admission and invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV); grade 3 included non-IMV ICU and/or noninvasive positive pressure ventilation; grade 2 included diagnosis of acute respiratory failure; and grade 1 included none of the above indicators. Trends were stratified by sex, age, race/ethnicity, and comorbid conditions. We also examined severity in states with high vs low Alpha (B.1.1.7) variant burden. RESULTS: Severity tended to be lower among women, younger adults, and those with fewer comorbidities compared to their counterparts. The proportion of admissions classified as grade 1 or 2 fluctuated over time, but these less-severe grades comprised a majority (75%-85%) of admissions every month. Grades 3 and 4 consistently made up a minority of admissions (15%-25%), and grade 4 showed consistent decreases in all subgroups, including states with high Alpha variant burden. CONCLUSIONS: Clinical severity among hospitalized patients with COVID-19 has varied over time but has not consistently or markedly worsened over time. The proportion of admissions classified as grade 4 decreased in all subgroups. There was no consistent evidence of worsening severity in states with higher vs lower Alpha prevalence.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Chapter 8 Performing Democracy Bad and Nasty Patriot Acts

  Cornell University Press eBooks · 2021-01-15

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Religion, Mindfulness, and Resilience as Strategies to Cope With Anxiety

  Digital Commons - Winthrop University (Winthrop University) · 2020-01-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  This study examined mindfulness, resilience, and anxiety in adults adhering to either traditional or progressive, more flexible, faith beliefs. Participants (n = 98) were college students (64% Caucasian; 85% women) with a mean age of 21.78 (SD = 5.44). Twenty-nine percent had previously received a diagnosis of anxiety. Participants responded to the following scales: Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being, Mindfulness Attention Awareness, Spiritual Experience Index, and Brief Resilience. Additionally, participants were asked about their level of agreement with religious tenants in order to categorize participants as having traditional, progressive, or non-differentiated religious beliefs. It was found that mindfulness and resilience emerged as better predictors of anxiety level than did religion. Contradicting the hypothesis, higher mindfulness did not predict lower anxiety; instead, lower anxiety related to lower mindfulness and higher resilience. Perhaps a mindful, or intentional, focus on daily experiences increased anxiety in anxious people, and the current sample of college students reported high levels of anxiety. Traditionally religious college students reported using religion to cope with stress; however, they were no more or less anxious than other students. This study also found that adults who agreed with liberal theology looked more like non-religious than conservatively religious adults in terms of religion’s impact on their lives. These findings emphasize the fact that adults who consider themselves to be religious are not a homogeneous group and that the trait of resilience might be a more consistent buffer against anxiety than is mindfulness or religion.

  Publisher

• Adages for Ethical Graduate Mentoring in the Twenty-first Century

  Theatre topics · 2019-01-01 · 2 citations

  articleSenior author

  Adages for Ethical Graduate Mentoring in the Twenty-first Century Charlotte M. Canning (bio), Esther Kim Lee (bio), and Sara Warner (bio) We were among the fortunate ones, and even then we knew it. After graduating with our doctoral degrees, we got tenure-track jobs in top-ranked programs at Research 1 (R1) universities. We each knew brilliant and talented people in our graduate programs for whom this was not true. Our paths were not without challenges, including deeply gendered obstacles, but we are now in positions that come with many privileges. With these privileges, however, come an equal number of responsibilities to research, teach, and serve on and off our campuses. Of these responsibilities, the one that is the most challenging is our role as advisers and mentors to PhD students. The three of us defended our dissertations in a historical moment when we were taught to be like our advisers, and the goal of almost everyone in our cohorts was to be a professor. Although the job market since the 1970s has been subject to downturns, there was little discussion of the ultimate end-goal of doctoral education. Now, however, there are many questions surrounding the purpose of doctoral education and whether or not the professoriate is indeed the goal for everyone, or whether this can be a goal at all. We did not experience the level of uncertainty our students are now experiencing, but we want to be the best advisers we can to help our students navigate the changing landscape of graduate education. Earlier in our careers, we all believed that we could change anything, and that what we endured our students would not. Esther wanted to make sure her students of color would not be the only minority participants in a seminar or a conference panel, as she often was in graduate school. A first-generation college student, Sara was the only working-class member of her graduate school cohort and the only out lesbian in most of her classes. Charlotte’s program was all white and mostly women. She hoped, like Esther and Sara, for greater diversity and that women would not silently have to endure sexual harassment. To some extent that has proven to be true, and our students have a greater voice and more support than we did. These changes, unfortunately, are not enough that we can look with pride on the current situation in academia, especially when it comes to diversity, inclusion, and ethical actions. We are advising our students to navigate a market that looks nothing like the one we experienced. We struggle daily with the ethics of what we are doing: How do we know we are making the right choices? How do we fulfill our obligations with integrity? What does a respectful partnership with our students look like? In what follows, we share some of our thoughts on what we have identified as the biggest challenges we face as professors and advisers to graduate students. We place particular focus on the job market and the issues of diversity as a way to ground our conversation. By reflecting on our own career trajectories and the current trends in our field, we hope to shed some light on how we approach the critically important responsibility of being doctoral advisors and mentors in the twenty-first century. Ethics and Advising I: Jobs Contingent, Alternative, and Adjacent The ethical quandary that those of us who administer PhD programs must grapple with is not simply the question of employment in higher education, but what kinds of jobs our students [End Page 103] can hope to get and where. Of course, getting a PhD as a theatre academic/scholar has always been something like a leap of faith. Even when Charlotte entered the job market in 1991, she received letters saying that searches had been closed due to losses of funding or hiring freezes at the institutions holding the searches. Perhaps one part of understanding our students’ future is to stop implying a past golden age, which never really existed. This is not to say, however, that there are not significant differences here in the early twenty-first century compared to the late twentieth...

  PublisherDOI

• 10,000 Nights: Highlights from 50 Years of Theatre-Going

  Modern Drama · 2018-11-20

  article1st authorCorresponding

  A collaborative review of Marvin Carlson’s 10,000 Nights that distils and concatenates seven appraisals by doyens in a variety of periods and genres delivered at the 2017 ASTR Extra/Ordinary Bodies conference.

  PublisherDOI

• ATHE’s Latent Homosexuality: Commemorative Remarks at the 2015 ATHE General Membership Meeting

  Theatre topics · 2016-03-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Hide and Go Seek: Child’s Play as Archival Act in Valerie Solanas’s <i>SCUM Manifesto</i>

  TDR/The Drama Review · 2014-11-17 · 18 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  In contrast to celebratory chronicles that sanitize queer history, Valerie Solanas’s SCUM Manifesto casts bad girls as the central protagonists in the drama of social change. Archiving the adolescent urges and puerile political yearnings of degenerate dykes, it shows revolution to be a dirty girl’s game.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Mary Jo Watts

  Ithaca College

  3 shared

• Alison F. Hinckley

  2 shared

• Erin Hurley

  2 shared

• P. V. LeForge

  2 shared

• Sameer S. Kadri

  National Heart Lung and Blood Institute

  1 shared

• Harvey Young

  Boston University

  1 shared

• Emilia H. Koumans

  1 shared

• Hailey Upton

  1 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Comparative Literature with a Certificate in Women's Studies

  Rutgers University

  2003

• M.A. (with distinction), Comparative Literature

  San Francisco State University

  1996

• B.A. (cum laude), English & Philosophy

  Louisiana State University

  1990

Awards & honors

• Outstanding Book Award from the Association of Theater in Hi…
• Honorable Mention for the Barnard Hewitt Award from the Amer…
• Lambda Literary Award finalist
• Stephen H. Weiss Junior Fellow (2016)
• Mellon Foundation Fellow