Professor Geraldine Harris

PhD Supervision Interests

Gerry would be happy to supervise postgraduate students interested in any issues related to her research areas. She has in the past supervised to successful completion PhD Students on the following topics: Millennial anxiety in the work of Rose English, English, Forced Entertainment and Insomniac, heritage and site specific performance, narrative in contemporary experimental performance (Imitating the dog, Desperate Optimists, Insomniac, the Wooster Group), multi media in contemporary performance (Uninvited Guests, Station House Opera, the Wooster Group, Fura del Baus) as well as on topics relating to feminism and gender politics in theatre and performance. These include PhD's with practice as research elements.

She is currently supervising postgraduates working on representations of masculinity in crises in theatre and performance,the erotics of circus, issues of participtation and democracry in contemporary performance, issues of teaching citizenship in schools in the UK and Uganda.

Current Teaching

At present at undergraduate level Gerry teaches Devising and Television Drama

Research Interests

BACKGROUND

Gerry Harris has a BA and an MA in Drama from Manchester and a PhD from Lancaster. Before coming to focus on contemporary theatre and performance, Gerry's early research was into women performers in 19th Century French popular theatre, specifically the Café-Concert and the Music Hall. She published on this area in New Theatre Quarterly, The Drama Review (TDR) and in The New Woman and Her Sisters, edited by Viv Gardner and Susan Rutherford ( London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992).

Since the early 1980s, she has also worked as a devisor, writer, adapter and director both inside and outside H.E. This includes works with Insomniac Productions, such as her rewriting and redirecting of the show Clare De Luz for the Munich Spielart Festival in 1995, and her writing of the text for With The Light On, a short film by Third Angel, nominated for best script at the British short film festival in 1996.

While at Lancaster, Gerry helped set up PALATINE and for much of its life (2001-2011) acted as either Director or Co-Director of this organisation.

Between 2003 and 2006 Gerry was a member of research panel 7 (performing arts) for the AHRC, and from 2006 a member of the AHRC peer review panel. She is a member of the editorial board of Studies in Theatre and Performance and alsofor Arts and Humanities in Higher Education.

CURRENT RESEARCH

Gerry's move into focussing on the politics of subjectivity and identity in contemporary theatre and performance in the 1990s was reflected in articles for The Contemporary Theatre Review, New Theatre Quarterly and Studies in Theatre Production and in her 1999 monograph Staging Feminities Performance and Performativity (Manchester University Press), which considers performances by Rose English, Bobby Baker and Annie Sprinkle. This was followed by a period of consolidating her research into the aesthetics and politics of television drama, which resulted in her monograph Beyond Representation: Television Drama and the Politics and Aesthetics of Identity, Manchester University Press (2006).

In 2003, with Professor Elaine Aston, she was awarded a large grant by the AHRC for a three year research project entitled Women's Writing for Performance (project website ). This included workshops with Jenny Éclair, Bobby Baker, Vayu Naidu, Curious, Jackie Kay, Sarah Daniels, Rebecca Prichard, SuAndi Gilly Adams and Geddy Anskil and Marisa Carnesky. The project culminated in an International Symposium held at Lancaster University in April 2006 and an 'Artist's Forum at the Theatre Museum in London in November 2006. It has resulted in two book publications, Feminist Futures? Theatre, Theory, Performance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) and Process and Practice: Contemporary [Women] Practitioners: (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). Since then Gerry has been publishing artcles and chapters on a wide range of topics and working on another co-authored book with Elaine Aston.

Additional Information

Publications since 2001

Forthcoming

Co-Authored Book with Elaine Aston:  A Good Night Out for the Girls: Popular Feminisms in Contemporary Theatre and Performance, Palgrave Macmillan ( in press).

Article: 'A Return to Form? Postmasculine Television Drama in the Wake of The Sopranos, The New Review of Film and Televsion Studies ( n press).

Monograph

Beyond Representation: Television Drama and the Politics and Aesthetics of Identity, Manchester University Press: 2006.

Co-authored book

Practice and Process: Contemporary [Women] Practitioners, Elaine Aston and Geraldine Harris, Palgrave Macmillan: 2007.

Edited Book

Feminist Futures? Theatre, Theory, Performance,, Elaine Aston and Geraldine Harris (eds.), Palgrave Macmillan: 2007. Includes co-authored introduction and chapter.

Chapters in books

Apres toutes ces Elles/After all this Else: ?New' French Feminisms Translated to the British Scene', in Clare Finburgh and Carl Lavery (eds) Contemporary French Theatre and Performance, Palgrave Macmillan.

'How to Shop' and 'Integrity the Essential Ingredient' in Bobby Baker: Redeeming Features of Daily Life, Bobby Baker and Michele Barrett (eds.), Routledge: 2007.

'It's Good To Look at One's Own Shadow: A Women's International Festival and Questions For International Feminism', co-authored with Elaine Aston and Lena Simic Anderson in Feminist Futures? Theatre, Theory, Performance, Elaine Aston and Geraldine Harris (eds.), Palgrave Macmillan: 2006, pp.169-189.

'Turing Test: doo-cot's Frankenstein the Final Blasphemy' in Performing Nature: Explorations in Ecology and the Arts, Gabriella Giannachi and Nigel Stewart (eds.), Berne: Peter Lang: 2006, pp.133-46.

Articles

'Susan and Darren : The Appearance of Authenticity', Performance Research, 13:4, 2008, pp.4-15

 'Watching Whoopi: The Politics and Ethics of the Ethics of Witnessing', Performance Paradigm, 5:1, 2009 (on-line journal) http://performanceparadigm.net/

'Foreshadowings and After Blows: Fiona Templeton's The Medead', Studies in Theatre and Performance, Vol. 23, No. 3, 2004: pp. 165-177. Also available on line at Foreshadowings and After Blows, as part of AHRC funded Presence Project' based at University of Exeter UK and Stanford University US.

'Double Acts, Theatrical Couples in Split Britches Double Agency', New Theatre Quarterly, Vol. 18, Part 3, August 2002, pp. 211-222. Also available on line via Double Acts

Other

2006 Dramaturg on the show Crowhurst for Benchtours Theatre.

2006, Co-Producer with Elaine Aston and Suzi Wood on Split Britches edited video documentation of practice as research, a workshop ledby Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw.

2004 Co-Producer with Elaine Aston and Lena Simic, Performing Words, edited video documentation of practice as research, a workshop led by Gilly Adams and Geddy Anskil.

Selected Conference and Seminar Papers

2007 Susan and Darren , A Manchester Tale, PSi , New York. 2006 'Embodied Knowledges, The Women's Writing For Performance Project' at the University of Melbourne and the University of New South Wales. 2006 'Embodied Knowlegdes', Opening paper at the International Symposium on Women's Writing for Performance., Lancaster April 2006. This paper was also webcast. 2005 'Self Conscious Interventions', for Mapping Performance, international seminar, University of Leeds. 2005 'Beyond Performativity' for research seminar at Central School of Speech and Drama, London. 2003 'Roots in Transit', an international feminist theatre Festival and Questions for International feminism, with Elaine Aston presented to the Feminist Working Group at the International Federation for Theatre Research Conference, St Petersburg. 2002 Panel discussion with Annie Sprinkle at the Centre for Contemporary Arts as part of Glasgay International Theatre Festival. 2002 'Fiona Templeton's The Medead (In Progress)', for International Federation for Theatre Research, World Congress, Amsterdam. 2001 'Between Fantasy and The Possible in the Work of Split Britches', presented to seminar group at American Association for Theatre Research, University of San Diego, California.