Joshua Bastian Cole

Who is Cole?

Joshua Bastian Cole (whose preferred name is Cole) is an out trans man playwright, dramaturg, theatre historian, cinema theorist, and fifth year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Performing and Media Arts at Cornell University. At Cornell, he has taught three semesters of a first-year writing seminar on queer doppelgängers. He holds a Master’s Degree in Theatre History and Criticism from CUNY, Brooklyn College, a B.A. in Theatre and Dance from James Madison University and has been an active member of ASTR, ATHE, LMDA, and CORD. As an actor, Cole has played leading trans men in films which have toured festivals internationally, and he has appeared as a guest on radio and podcasts. While living in New York City, Cole was a script reader for New Georges and taught in the Department of Speech, Communications, and Theatre Arts at CUNY, Borough of Manhattan Community College. After relocating from Brooklyn to Burlington, Vermont, Cole worked as a paraeducator and also lectured in the Communication Department at SUNY Plattsburgh. His publications include essays in the anthologies Trans Forming Families, Beyond Masculinity, and Visible: A Femmethology. Cole has been featured in American Theatre, Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, TCG Circle, Bust, Autostraddle, Out Magazine, Original Plumbing, The Daily Beast, Time Out New York, London Metro, and the syndicated column: Trans Nation. He has forthcoming articles in Theatre Forum and Somatechnics.

Cole’s academic work has encompassed dramaturgy and dramatic literature; classical revision/adaptation; transgender and queer performance and spectatorship theory; feminist, cyborg, Deaf and disability theatre; puppetry and performing objects; phenomenology and embodied practice. Currently, Cole’s research interests intersect multiple fields—transgender studies, disability and Deaf studies, theatre, film and television studies, and phenomenology—as they pertain to trans men’s imaginaries.