Associate Professor of Theatre Studies and Directing
Head of Theatre Studies
Dr. Ann Folino White is a scholar and theatre artist. She received her B.A. in Theatre from Michigan State University, M.A. in Theatre from Northwestern University, and Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Theatre and Drama along with a Gender Studies Certificate from Northwestern University.
Dr. Folino White’s teaching interests include stage directing, performance theory, and American theatrical and popular performance from the late-nineteenth century to the early-twentieth century. In 2015, Dr. Folino White received the Mid-Michigan Alumni Association Quality in Undergraduate Teaching Award.
Her scholarship on American drama, protest, and performances has appeared in American Drama, Text and Performance Quarterly, Performing Arts Resources, Women and Performance and TDR: The Drama Review. She is contributing co-editor of the essay anthology, Food & Theatre on the World Stage (Routledge, 2015). Her book Plowed Under: Food Policy Protests and Performance in New Deal America (Indiana University Press, 2015) was awarded the 2015 Working Class Studies Association CLR James Book Award.
She has served as a dramaturg for Appletree Theatre and Writers’ Theatre in the Chicago-area, and as a new play reader for Steppenwolf Theatre Company. Select directing credits for MSU DOT include The Grapes of Wrath, In the Blood, Widows, Macbeth, and Fallen Angels. Dr. Folino White also directed her own adaptation of the book The Lady Victory (by Jane Vincent Taylor, Turning Point Press 2012), which explores the experiences of girls sent to a home for unwed mothers in 1960s Oklahoma.