Sarah Richter

Adjunct Instructor

Sarah Richter is a writer and scholar from Florida. Most recently, she held teaching and research appointments at Brown University’s feminist research institute, the Pembroke Center, as well as the Brown Arts Institute. In 2024, she received a PhD (with distinction) from Performance Studies at NYU. Her dissertation considered anarchism as a practice of shelter, and was generously supported by residencies at ΎΛΗ[matter]HYLE in Athens, Greece and by the Mainzer Fellowship for love and sexuality studies. In addition to Brown and NYU, Sarah has taught art history at Cooper Union and theory at The New School. Her writing on art, politics, and performance has appeared in the Journal of Visual Culture, PMLA, TDR/The Drama Review, and Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory, where she was the former managing editor. In 2023-4, Sarah was a Helena Rubenstein Critical Studies Fellow at the Whitney ISP. With Sara Nadal-Melsió, she convened a reading group on Walter Benjamin’s “Critique of Violence."

  • Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.

  • “My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”

  • From its beginnings, Cooper Union was a unique institution, dedicated to founder Peter Cooper's proposition that education is the key not only to personal prosperity but to civic virtue and harmony.

  • Peter Cooper wanted his graduates to acquire the technical mastery and entrepreneurial skills, enrich their intellects and spark their creativity, and develop a sense of social justice that would translate into action.