Mario LaMothe is Assistant Professor in the Departments of Black Studies and Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he is also a faculty affiliate in Gender and Women's Studies, and Museum and Exhibition Studies. He received a doctorate in Performance Studies from Northwestern University. Mario's research focuses on embodied pedagogies of Caribbean arts and expressive cultures, and the intersections of queer lifeworlds and social justice in Haiti. A performance artist, his work has appeared in e-misferica, Conversations Across the Field of Dance Studies, Women and Performance, the Journal of Haitian Studies, The Routledge Companion to African American Theatre and Performance, and Duke University Press’ co-edited volume Time Signatures: Race and Performance after Repetition.

Co-Editor:

• Special Issue “Nou Mache Ansanm (We Walk Together): Queer Haitian Performance and Affiliation.” With Dasha A. Chapman and Erin Durban-Albrecht. Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory 27.2, spring 2017.

Book Chapter:

• “Witnessing Queer Flights: Josué Azor’s Lougawou Images and Antihomosexual Unrest in Haiti.” Race and Performance After Repetition, edited by Soyica Diggs Colbert, Douglas Jones, and Shane Vogel. Duke University Press, September 2020.
• “The United States of Lucia: Three Generations of Haitian-Americans Reconfigure Ancestry, Home and Host Lands through Storytelling.” The Routledge Companion to African American Theatre and Performance (CAATP), edited by Kathy A. Perkins, Sandra L. Richards, Renée Alexander Craft, and Thomas F. DeFrantz. Forthcoming, 2018.
• “Witnessing Queer Flights:
Josué Azor’s Photo-Documentary of Lougawou Images in the Contemporary Era of Anti-Homosexual Unrest in Haiti.” Time Signatures: Race and Performance after Repetition, edited by Soyica Colbert, Douglas Jones, and Shane Vogel. Forthcoming, Duke University Press, 2018-19.

Journal and Public Humanities Articles:

• “Afro-Feminist Performance Routes: Documenting Embodied Dialogue and AfroFem Articulations” (Oral Histories). August 2021. Written by the AfroFem Cohort, compiled and introduced by Dasha A. Chapman and Mario LaMothe. Dance Review Journal 53.2: 8 – 26.
• “Manbo Ayizan on a New York Stage: How Roxane D’Orléans Juste Danced Women’s Movement Intelligence.” The Journal of Haitian Studies 25.2, Fall 2019.
• “Our Love on Fire: Gay Men’s Stories of Violence and Hope in Haiti.” Special Issue “Nou Mache Ansanm (We Walk Together): Queer Haitian Performance and Affiliation. Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory 27.2, spring 2017.
• “Dedouble and Jeanguy Saintus’ Corporeal Gifts.” e-misférica 11.2, spring 2015.

Health Communication:

• Associate Researcher. PSI Research and Metrics. “2014 Integrated Behavioral and Biological Survey (IBBS) with Female Commercial Sex Workers and Men who Have Sex with Men.” Summary Reports (2014, 2015). Funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), German bank KFW and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Péguy-Ville, Haiti.
• Associate Researcher. PSI Research and Metrics. “HIV Prevalence and Condom Use Among Men who Have Sex with Men.” Summary TRaC Report (2012). Funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), German bank KFW and the United Nations Development Programme. Pétion-Ville, Haiti.

Centre et Compagnie de Danse Jean-René Delsoin/Haiti, Artistic Consultant (2006 – Present)

Ayikodans/Haiti, Artistic Consultant (2013 – Present)

Howard Brown Health Center/Chicago, IL, Community Advisory Board (2016 – Present)

UIC PASEO, School of Public Health, Community Advisory Board (2017 – Present)

Ph.D., Northwestern University, 2015. Performance Studies
M.F.A., Brooklyn College (CUNY), 1999. Performing Arts Management
Certificate, Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, 1994. Dance
B.A., Boston College, 1992. Theater Arts and French Studies

American Society for Theatre Research

American Studies Association

Association for Theatre in Higher Education

Caribbean Studies Association

The Collegium for African Diaspora Dance

Dance Studies Association

Haitian Studies Association

National Communication Association

SLIPPAGE: Performance/Culture/Technology

My burgeoning project Bodily Rites/Performance Rightsjuxtaposes oral history with Africanist dramatic conventions as pedagogical methods that not only create dialogues between ethnographic subjects and readers or performers but also enable wide circulation of knowledge about misunderstood lifeworlds. Gender and sexually liberated men and women narrate their experiences of spirit possession, tolerance, and discrimination in Haitian Vodou spaces and interrelated African diaspora religious enclaves in the Caribbean. A pedagogical tool to assess critical intersections of Black embodiment and aesthetics, Bodily Rites/Performance Rightsaims to chronicle how divinely guided bodies navigate places of worship as they seek not only to critique social relations but also to transform them.

Co-Convener:
2018 & 2016:Afro-Feminist Performance Routes: An Embodied Dialogue, Duke University, April 2016 and February 2018.

Curation:
2018: ‘Sanctified’ I & II.  University of Illinois at Chicago, African-American Cultural Center, fall 2018. Two distinct yet complimentary exhibits increase public knowledge of Haitian-American author, perfomer and gay rights activist Assotto Saint (b. Yves Francis Lubin). They also introduce visitors to news way of thinking about African diaspora religions.

2016 – 2017:A Year of Remedies. University of Illinois at Chicago, African-American Cultural Center. A year-round series featuring visual arts exhibits, film and digital series screening, community workshops, a dance performance and a symposium.

2016: Butarewegoodnow. Movement improvisation choreography, Columbia College dancers. Assistant to choreographer Thomas DeFrantz. Columbia College, Chicago, IL, October 2016.

2015: A Choreography of Contagion: Absence and Presence of Black Bodies in Health Visual Culture.University of Illinois at Chicago, African-American Cultural Center, fall 2015.

2015: Noctambules: Queer Nightlife in Haiti.Photographic series co-curated with Dasha A. Chapman. Duke University, 2015 - 2016.

Performer:
2015 – Present: Our Love on Fire: Gay Men’s Stories of Hope and Violence in Haiti.Performative presentation with post-presentation dialogue, Duke University, University of Illinois at Chicago, Illinois State University, Loyola University of Chicago, Haitian Studies Association Conference (2015), Caribbean Studies Association Conference (2016).

2016:  theory-ography 4.5-a we [still] queer here.SLIPPAGE: Performance |Culture| Technology. Founder and Director: Thomas DeFrantz; Project Dramaturg and Moderator: Clare Croft; Feminist Theory Workshop, Duke University, March 4, 2015.