Featured Faculty
Jill Bradbury
National Technical Institute for the Deaf
Dr. Jill Bradbury is Professor and Chair, Department of Performing Arts. Her research focuses on accessibility and inclusion in the performing arts, with a particular interest in Shakespeare in ASL. She has received multiple grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, and other organizations.
Funding received in 2022 includes a $20,000 grant from the NEA to support a Big Read focused on hard of hearing poet Ilya Kaminsky’s Deaf Republic. The Big Read project broadens our understanding of our world, our neighbors, and ourselves through the power of a shared reading experience. Big Read: NTID programming will take place throughout April 2023 in collaboration with Monroe County Library Services.
In 2022, Dr. Bradbury received a three-year grant from NYSCA for DeafBlind theater activities. Projects supported by this grant include an adaptation of Rapunzel that will tour to schools for the deaf in March 2023 and artists in residence beginning fall 2023. Dr. Bradbury received $25,000 from the NEA and $5,000 from the Rochester Area Community Foundation to support the Rapunzel project. Also in 2022, Dr. Bradbury received a $25,000 grant from the NEA to support an adaptation of Titus Andronicus. In collaboration with Play On Shakespeare, this production will create opportunities for students to work with top Deaf theater artists in summer 2024. Dr. Bradbury also received $5,000 grants from Theatre Development Fund to increase the number of open captioned performances on campus in 2023 and from the Rochester Area Community Foundation to support DeafBlind access to the collaborative NTID/CLA fall 2023 production.
Dr. Bradbury’s recent scholarship includes the collaborative essay "Protactile Shakespeare: Theater by/for the DeafBlind," Shakespeare Studies 47 (2019); “Audiences and ASL in Shakespeare Performance,” Shakespeare Bulletin 40.1 (2022); "Disability Embodiment and Inclusive Aesthetics," forthcoming in the edited collection Inclusive Shakespeares: Identity, Pedagogy, Performance (Palgrave 2023); and “Shakespeare and Sign Language,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Shakespeare (forthcoming 2024). With RIT colleague Andy Head, she is writing a book on integrated Deaf/hearing theater that will be published by Palgrave in 2024. Dr. Bradbury holds BA degrees in Economics and English from the University of California, Irvine; an MA in Economics from George Mason University; and an MA/PhD in English from Brown University.
Jill Bradbury
Department Chair
NTID Department for Performing Arts
National Technical Institute for the Deaf