My research proposes a counter-perspective in performance analysis by centering absence, erasure, and speculation as sites of meaning. At its heart lies the key question: How can performance be taught and analyzed through frameworks of spectrality and poetic absence?

In most Eurocentric approaches to performance theory, analysis is grounded in what can be seen, decoded, and explained. Yet a significant dimension of performance exists in what resists capture: the traces, silences, and ghostly presences. This project takes these ephemeral dimensions as its central focus, proposing that attending to what slips away from representation can open new analytical and pedagogical possibilities. By shifting attention from fixed, fully visible elements to what is fleeting, hidden, or unspoken, the research encourages students and scholars alike to cultivate sensitivity to the subtle, often overlooked aspects of performance.

To do so, I draw from two intellectual resources. Hauntology, as articulated by Jacques Derrida, foregrounds the ghostly presence of what is no longer or not yet, revealing how the past and future can inhibit the present performance in spectral ways. Persian epistemologies foreground metaphor, mysticism, and embodied multiplicity over linear clarity. Together, these frameworks suggest an alternative mode of performance analysis, one that asks students to attend to what lingers, what disappears, and what resists explanation.

This inquiry is deeply rooted in my personal and cultural background. Born and raised in Iran, I carry a lived connection to Persian literature and philosophy, which informs how I think, teach, and analyze. By activating these epistemologies within my teaching at the ATD and beyond, I aim to share them with students as tools of analysis and imagination. For students, especially those from diasporic or global majority backgrounds, this approach offers a refreshing and empowering alternative to dominant analytical frameworks. It fosters new ways of learning and artistic inquiry, cultivating openness to multiplicity, ambiguity, and what is ghosted, fleeting, or otherwise difficult to grasp.