Credit: Sophia Wood Photography
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Sarah M. Duncan is a white disabled queer cis femme living on the unceded land of the Wabanaki Confederacy. She teaches High School English and History, and she spends the rest of her time onstage performing, analyzing pop culture through the lens of disability justice, working on her creative writing projects, loving her people, and doing activist and mutual aid work in her community. Duncan holds a BA in Theatre Performance from Bradley University, an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Wyoming, an MA in American Studies from the UMass Boston, and an M.Ed in Secondary Social Studies Education from Goddard College.
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Pop Culture Scholarship
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Duncan studies the popularity and significance of the “time-loop” plot in 21st Century film and television. Her master's thesis, "This Feels Like Groundhog Day: Stuckness and the Cultural Work of 21st Century Televisual Time-Loop Plots," won the Michael Lenz Award for Nontraditional and Innovative Scholarship. Her time-loop theories were discussed in the Buffering the Vampire Slayer podcast episode on "Life Serial" from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which can be heard here.
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In 2021, Duncan was a featured guest on the Buffering the Vampire Slayer podcast episode, "Normalizing Harmful Shit, Again: Talking Mental Health and Pop Culture," where she talks with podcast host Kristin Russo and podcast producer Alba Daza about common ableist tropes and narratives in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode, "Normal Again" — but also in pop culture and television at large. Duncan went on to work for the Buffering podcast for four years as a research and administrative assistant, helping create publicly available catalogues of resources on social issues, such as this one.
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Multidisciplinary Art
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Duncan writes and performs in a variety of mediums. In 2019, her poetry chapbook, Week/End, was published by Headmistress Press, and one of the poems, We Went to a Farmer's Market, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. In 2015, her play Come Back Up was produced offBroadway by Sanguine Theatre Company at the The Gym at Judson. Over the last ten years, Duncan has performed poetry, stand-up comedy, theatre — and had work produced at — a variety of venues including Judson Memorial Church, Improv Boston, La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, Joe's Pub, The Cherry Lane Theatre, WOW Cafe Theatre, Baruch Performing Arts Center, The Wild Project.
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CUltural Work
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Duncan has a gift for connecting people and ideas. In NYC, Duncan organized, hosted, and curated poetry events throughout the city, including Judson Church's monthly poetry potlucks and for shows that delved into privilege and consent at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club. During the height of Occupy Wall Street, Duncan co-produced Occupy the Empty Space, which consisted of three interactive, political theatre festivals on housing justice, immigration justice, and the right to public space.
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As former writer for Monstering Magazine, Duncan challenged ableist and sanist values and practices, such as arguing that students should be allowed to turn their screens off on Zoom in her essay, "In Defense of the Black Zoom Square." She is fiercely committed to expanding awareness and support for those, like herself, living with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD). To that end, Duncan is intentionally open about her experiences, such as in her performance piece on the idea of "self-care." Other Monstering Magazine Work Includes: "Literally Impossible to Be Our Friend: Me, Myself, and the OCD-Coding of Chidi Anagonye" and "'It's All the Same Movie'": Code of the Freaks Cracks Hollywood's Ableist Legacy Wide Open."
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