Mike Franz

Instructional Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts

Michael Lawrence Franz is an Instructional Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts in the Department of Theatre & Film at the University of Missisippi. He has previously taught at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, FL and Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia, PA. He holds a Ph.D. in Theatre Studies from Florida State University, an M.A. in Theatre from Villanova University, and a B.A. in Theatre: Acting/Directing from DeSales University. He is a member of the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR), the Mid-America Theatre Conference (MATC), the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE), and the American Theatre and Drama Society (ATDS). He is currently serving a two-year term as co-chair of the Theatre History Symposium for the Mid-America Theatre Conference. 

Dr. Franz’s primary research area focuses on discourse around the topic of sport as performance, writing about individual figures, events, and other phenomena in contemporary sporting culture. His monograph The Best There Ever Was, The Best There Ever Will Be: Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Sheryl Swoopes, and Performances of Surrogation in Basketball focuses on men’s and women’s basketball in the U.S. from 1984 to the present, tracing a lineage of how players’ on and off-court performances create carefully curated images of themselves that circulate in popular media and take hold of the public’s imagination. He also writes about the history and works of seventeenth century French playwright Molière and the history surrounding company member Madeleine Béjart’s role in Molière’s troupe as an actress and administrator. 

 Dr. Franz’s writing has been published in The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism. He has presented his research at several academic conferences such as the American Society for Theatre Research, the Mid-America Theatre Conference, the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, the Doctoral Theatre Students Association at City University New York (DTSA), and the Sport and Literature Association (SLA).