Yarden Stern is an independent curator and PhD candidate at the department of Performance Studies at New York university. His work revolves around the politics of gender non-conformity as they intersect with discourses of nationalism.

His dissertation project, “Bodies Without Borders: Queerly Performing Israeli Citizenship”, concentrates on cultures of masculinity and heteronormativity in Israel/Palestine and transgressive responses by local and diasporic queer subjects to those conservative conventions. To think about gender nonconformity’s various presences and presentations, he uses post-human philosophy’s interest in connections between human and non-human actants.

As part of his work as public programs coordinators for the feminist journal women & perfoemance, Yarden Stern has organized and curated evenings of performance, including: “Persona” (2017), “Ember Ground” (2018) and “Cut the Crop: Performance Outside the Frame” (2019) at Center for Performance Research & Brooklyn Arts Exchange. He has been published in academic journals such as The Drama Review, Spectator & PRTCLS and is currently the co-editor of an upcoming special issue for journal women & performance titled “Border Encounter, Performing Thresholds”, which will be published in May 2022.