Skip to main content
ICAS 13 - 2024 Main banner
Programme Book
Back

Matthew I. Cohen

University of Connecticut, United States

Professor Matthew Isaac Cohen, Ph.D. teaches in the Department of Dramatic Arts at the University of Connecticut. He is an historian and anthropologist of theatre and performance who researches the arts of Indonesia, puppet theatres around the world, and transnational and intercultural performance. He is interested particularly in traditions in modernity; cultural mixture and itinerancy; and the emergence of new artistic forms and practices in sites of cultural complexity. His books include the award-winning The Komedie Stamboel: Popular Theater in Colonial Indonesia, 1891-1903 (Ohio University Press and KITLV Press); Performing Otherness: Java and Bali on International Stages, 1905-1952 (Palgrave Macmillan); and Inventing the Performing Arts: Modernity and Tradition in Colonial Indonesia (University of Hawai’i Press). He is currently at work on a visual history of wayang in Indonesia based on the Dr. Walter Angst and Sir Henry Angest Collection of Puppets at Yale University Art Gallery. He also performs wayang puppetry from time to time under the company name Kanda Buwana.

Presentation(s):