Hillary Sunberg

Hillary Sunberg is a PhD student at the University of Toronto, where she is researching how experiential drama-as-education techniques can be applied to the analysis of ecocritical narratives. She is a seasoned playwright, stage manager, arts educator, and performer, having performed with such organizations as the New York International Fringe Festival, New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall, New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and the Vancouver Opera. She is also a founding board member of Pariah Theatre Company, a non-profit theatre group on the South Shore of Massachusetts dedicated to the intersection of theatre and social justice. Her play The Naked Truth, a devised/documentary hybrid work about the effect of purity culture on women’s lived sexual experiences, is currently being workshopped and prepared for production. While at the University of Toronto, Hillary fell in love with ecocriticism, and is now the Project Manager of The Persephone Project, an environmental humanities research collective at U of T. With the project, she is currently exploring how myth, earth time, and the demands of 21st century feminism might intertwine to reveal a new, embodied way forward when facing the impending climate crisis. 

Current research interests include: ecocriticism/environmental humanities, cultural studies, experiential pedagogy, process drama, 20th century American drama, documentary theatre, devised theatre, American literature (1800-present), folklore/myth, oral storytelling, gender and sexuality studies, and the intersection of female sexuality and religion.