Sophia Weltman
PhD Student
Sophia Weltman’s research concerns the relationship between decay and subject formation. Her work addresses the ways in which ruin and decay, from their constant states of change and ever-evolving nature, catastrophize dominant epistemologies and value systems predicated on fixedness and preservation. Through the examination of cultural productions characterized by ruin and decay, Sophia seeks alternative ways of conceiving the human, history, and speculative futures by engaging negation as generative and radically transformative. Sophia is particularly interested in deterioration as an aesthetic performative, as a process of becoming that changes our social realities. Sophia’s research is in direct conversation with the philosophies of difference and aesthetics of global capitalism that constitute Western civilization. Through performance studies and a design background, Sophia offers interventions that are particularly sensitive to materiality, identity, and the body. Sophia is in her first year of her PhD in theater and performance studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. Sophia received her MFA in theater design from UCLA in 2023 and her BA in human geography from the University of California, Berkeley.
Research Interests
Aesthetics of Global Capitalism, Embodiment, Decay, Difference
Education
MFA, Costume Design, UCLA
Certificate in Women’s Fashion, Instituto Marangoni
BA, Human Geography, UC Berkeley
Presentations
“Forbidden: Helen Rose and the Fabric of Imagined Futures,” Critical Costume, University of California, Los Angeles, 2024
“Beige Enchantment: SKIMS and Second Skin,” 32nd Annual Berkeley Interdisciplinary German Studies Conference on Beauty and Artifice, 2024
