Department Chair This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Office Location: ASC 256
(205) 934-1433

Megan Lewis is a South African-American theatre historian and film and performance scholar. She is the author of Performing Whitely in the Postcolony (2016, University of Iowa Press) and Magnet Theatre: Three Decades of Making Space (2016, Intellect Books and UNISA Press), which won the Hiddingh-Currie National Book Award in 2018. Lewis has published on African theatre, film, and performance in Theatre Journal, Performing Arts Journal, Theatre History Studies, Text & Performance, Theatre Topics, and The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism.

Dr. Lewis is a multidisciplinary educator with a passion for inspiring intellectual curiosity and advocating for the performing arts as a powerful force for social activation and change. Her teaching passions include South African theatre and film, the politics of performance, non-Western performance traditions, theatres of dissent, and the performance of gender and race.

Lewis’ accolades include a 2015 Distinguished Teacher Award from the University of Massachusetts Amherst; a national book award in 2018; an intensive summer study abroad program – Arts & Culture in South Africa – focused around the National Arts Festival in Makhanda; and two global teaching voyages for Semester at Sea in 2018 and 2024. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Alabama at Birmingham as Full Professor, she was the Director of the Division of Theatre at Colorado State University, earned tenure at UMass Amherst, and was Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota.

Lewis believes that with advancement in the academy comes a responsibility to give back through visionary leadership. Megan is a champion of a rich and diverse theatre, an advocate for public education, and is a passionate advocate for the Arts, encouraging the integration of the “A” in “STEM” to make “STEAM.”