Faculty

Adjunct Professor

Office Hours: By appointment only
Email: claireco@mit.edu

Educational Background

BA: Wesleyan University
MA: Harvard University
PhD: Cornell University

Courses Taught

EAASW4217 China On Stage

Research Interests

Claire Conceison is a scholar, translator, and director. She is Quanta Professor of Chinese Culture and Professor of Theater Arts at MIT, where her teaching and research include Chinese theater, cross-cultural performance, play translation, Asian American theater, and sport as performance. 

Her book Significant Other: Staging the American in China (2004) examines representations of Americans on the Chinese stage from 1987-2002. She is editor of the anthology I Love XXX and Other Plays by Meng Jinghui (2017). Her play translations include contemporary Chinese plays as well as Gao Xingjian’s French plays into English. Her 2009 book Voices Carry: Behind Bars and Backstage During China’s Revolution and Reform (Chinese version 水流云在：英若诚自传) is the collaborative autobiography of the late Chinese actor and cultural diplomat Ying Ruocheng.Conceison wrote the introduction to ‘Death of a Salesman’ in Beijing (2015), a new edition of Arthur Miller’s 1984 book ‘Salesman’ in Beijing, and is a contributor to the volume Arthur Miller for the Twenty-First Century (2020), as well as the editor of a new student edition of Death of a Salesman (2022). She also wrote the introduction to Wu Shiliang’s 1963 Chinese translation of Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun (2020). 

Selected Publications

“Miller in China” in David Palmer and Stephen Marino, eds., Arthur Miller for the 21^st Century: Contemporary Views of his Writings and Ideas (Palgrave 2020)

I Love XXX and Other Plays by Meng Jinghui (Seagull Books 2017) http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/I/bo25016437.html

“Eating Red: Performing Maoist Nostalgia in Beijing’s Revolution-Themed Restaurants” in Dorothy Chansky and Ann White, eds., Food and Theatre on the World Stage (Routledge 2015)

Ballade Nocturne by Gao Xingjian. Translated by Claire Conceison. The Cahiers Series. (Sylph Editions and American University of Paris 2010)

Voices Carry: Behind Bars and Backstage during China’s Revolution and Reform. (Rowman & Littlefield 2009) 水流云在：英若诚自传  Shuiliu Yunzai: The Autobiography of Ying Ruocheng. (CITIC 2009)

Significant Other: Staging the American in China. (University of Hawai’i Press 2004)