Professor McGinley is Associate Professor of Performing Arts and Director of the Program in American Culture Studies.
She is the author of Staging the Blues: From Tent Shows to Tourism (Duke University Press), which offers an interdisciplinary account of blues’ roots in theatrical performance and popular entertainment. Staging the Blues was recognized with the John W. Frick Book Award from the American Theater and Drama Society and the American Society for Theatre Research’s Errol Hill Award. Her current book-in-progress, People Get Ready: Practice and Performance in the Long Civil Rights Movement is an in-depth look at a culture and ethos of embodied practice that permeated the mid-century Black freedom struggle.
Professor McGinley’s research and teaching interests include theater and performance history and historiography; popular entertainment and performance; African American theater and performance; and contemporary theater. Her scholarship has been published in venues including Theatre Journal, American Quarterly, American Literature, and TDR. She is a recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, including a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship.