Jules Odendahl-James is the Resident Dramaturg, a Visiting Lecturer, and the Coordinating Director of the Performance and Embodied Research Colloquium (PERC) at Duke University.

She holds a PhD in Performance Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2003) and an MFA in Directing from the University of Texas at Austin (1996). Her work has appeared in Theater Survey; Crime, Media, Culture; In Media Res, Text and Performance Quarterly, M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, and Theater InSight.

Other contributions include entries on forensic science for The Social History of Crime and Punishment (SAGE, forthcoming), documentary films and filmmakers for The Encyclopedia of Documentary Film (Routledge, 2006), and on arts funding and censorship for Social Issues: An Encyclopedia of Controversies, Histories, and Debates (East River, 2006).

Her current book project, Over My Dead Body: Documentary Performance and the Forensic Imagination, explores intersections among individual trauma, public memory, and social activism by tracing the shared origins, divergent visual technologies, and complimentary narrative constructs of contemporary documentary performance and forensic media. She is also developing work and projects that explore the evolving archival practices surrounding staged performance in the digital age.

She is a founding member of Bold Maids Productions, a feminist performance company (1996 – 2003) who, in addition to producing work by women playwrights, composed a series of original scripts tackling issues of identity, sexuality, and politics through a vaudevillian approach to academic theory. Her directing work is marked by her investments in an ensemble dynamic, cross-gender casting and performance language, the work of female playwrights, and the adaptation of literature and visual texts for the stage.   As a freelance dramaturg she specializes in devised new works and documentary theater and has a particular interest in installation and online dramaturgy. In North Carolina she has worked with Playmakers Repertory Company, Manbites Dog Theater, Little Green Pig Theatrical Concern, UNC’s Department of Dramatic Art, Company Carolina, and Duke University.

As a teacher she has created classes in the Performance of Literature, Group Performance, Women’s Studies, Media Studies, Social Theory, Introduction to Performance Studies, Scripting & Directing, Play Analysis, Dramaturgy, Performing Science, and Academic Writing.