Soyica Diggs Colbert is the Idol Family Professor of Black Studies and Performing Arts at Georgetown University. Colbert’s award-winning book, Radical Vision, a “loving, lavishly detailed” (New York Times) portrait of Lorraine Hansberry’s life, art, and political activism—one of O Magazine‘s best books of April 2021 is also described as “A devoted and deeply felt account of the development of an artist’s mind,” according to Dave Itzkoff, New York Times Book Review. In this acclaimed biography of Lorraine Hansberry, Colbert narrates a life at the intersection of art and politics, arguing that for Hansberry the theater operated as a rehearsal room for her political and intellectual work.
She has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support a residency at the Schomburg Center, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Stanford University, Mellon Foundation, and the Robert W. Woodruff Library at Emory University. Colbert has also lectured nationally and internationally at universities, high schools, and middle schools as well as for civic and arts organizations. Colbert’s writing has been featured in The New York Times, Washington Post, Public Books, Metrograph and American Theatre. She has been interviewed on NPR and commented for the New York Times, USA Today, CNN, and the Washington Post.
She is an Associate Director at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C. In addition to Radical Vision, Colbert is the author of Bodies: Theory for Theatre Studies, Black Movements: Performance and Cultural Politics, and The African American Theatrical Body. Colbert co-edited Race and Performance After Repetition and The Psychic Hold of Slavery. She has also served as a Creative Content Producer for The Public Theatre’s audio play, shadow/land. Her research interests span the 19th-21st centuries, from Harriet Tubman to Beyoncé, and from poetics to performance.