The National Communication Association recently presented M. Heather Carver with the 2021 Leslie Irene Coger Award for Distinguished Performance. The award honors a body of performance or an outstanding career in performance. Professor Carver is chair of the department of theatre at the University of Missouri.
A news release from the National Communication Association said that “M. Heather Carver’s career in performance studies has been exemplary. Dr. Carver models the artist/scholar dynamic with a steadiness of inquiry, a boldness of tongue, and a softness of reflexivity. Dr. Carver’s performance work exemplifies the highest levels of artistic excellence and social efficacy in performance studies methodologies. Dr. Carver’s solo work, which explores issues with breast cancer, and directing work, which engages the difficulty and complexity of domestic violence, provides, as one reviewer writes, ‘strategies that are moving and inspiring, a brave and empathetic connection to people facing similar challenges.'”
Carver is the co-author of Troubling Violence: A Performance Project (University Press of Mississippi, 2010). She has taught at the University of Missouri since 2000 and was promoted to full professor in 2014.