Ryan Donovan is Assistant Professor of Theater Studies at Duke University.

His first book, Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity (Oxford University Press), won the 2024 Outstanding Book Award from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, was selected for NPR’s 2023 Books We Love list, and appeared on Time Out New York's list of the top twelve theater books of the past three years. His second book, Queer Approaches in Musical Theatre, is part of the inaugural cohort of the Topics in Musical Theatre series.

He is President and co-founder (along with Jessica Sternfeld and Elizabeth L. Wollman) of the International Society for the Study of Musicals.

He is currently writing a history of how performing in Broadway musicals became backbreaking.