Meredith Conti is an Assistant Professor of Theatre at JMU, teaching theatre history, dramaturgy, performance analysis, dramatic literature, theory and performance studies, and general education courses. She arrived at JMU from the University of Pittsburgh, where she received her Master’s and Doctoral degrees in Theatre and Performance Studies. As an Andrew Mellon Pre-Doctoral Fellow, Conti completed her dissertation on performances of illness on the Victorian popular stage. Her work in the theatre includes acting, directing, dramaturgy, and stage combat choreography.

Conti’s scholarship has been published in the Journal of American Drama and Theatre, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, and Victorian Medicine and Popular Culture (Routledge, 2015). Her book reviews have appeared in Theatre Survey, Theatre Journal, Theatre History Studies, Comparative Drama, and the New England Theatre Journal, and she has presented at national and international conferences on theatre and performance, literature and medicine, American studies, and Victorian studies, including those convened by the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR), the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE), Mid-America Theatre Conference (MATC), the American Studies Association (ASA), the Northeastern Victorian Studies Association, and the Centre for Victorian Studies (University of Exeter). Conti holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in theatre performance from Denison University and a certificate from the British and American Drama Academy, an acting conservatory in London, England.

Conti serves as Book Review Editor for Theatre Annual and the Co-Chair for MATC's Pitch-Your-Book and Articles-in-Progress workshops. Her completed manuscript Fevered Acts: Performing Illness in the Age of Victorian Medicine is currently under review; she is also working toward a new monograph, a cultural history of guns in the American theatre. She is the past recipient of the ASTR Thomas Marshall Graduate Award, JMU's College of Visual and Performing Arts Summer Research Grant, University of Pittsburgh's Faculty of Arts and Letters Teaching Mentor, and the Summer Research Fellowship and PhD Teaching Award from Pitt's Department of Theatre Arts.