Laura M. Coby is PhD candidate in Literary Studies with a minor in Queer Studies. Her research focuses on modern to contemporary performance with a concentration in performance studies and queer theory. Her dissertation, “Spectral Futurity: The Performative Afterlives of Mourning,” explores how aesthetic mourning practices pave avenues for the dead to inhabit the present, refusing death’s finitude through aesthetic relational exchange. 

In Spring 2023, Laura was the Sue Divan Graduate Student Fellow in Performance Studies and directed a staged reading of Fefu & Her Friends by playwright María Irene Fornés, produced by Dr. Sandra Ruiz through La Estación Gallery and Minor Aesthetics Lab. During her time at UIUC, Laura has worked with La Estación Gallery to perform as a contributing poet, collaborative curator, multi-sensorial installation artist, workshop leader, intern, virtual stage manager, and social media designer. She also did dramaturgy for María Irene Fornés's The Successful Life of 3. Additionally, Laura has served as an Assistant Director of Rhetoric in the Department of English, the Round-the-Press Intern at the University of Illinois Press, and as a research assistant for Prof. Sandra Ruiz and Prof. Andy Gaedtke.