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Professor Geraldine (Gerry) Harris
Professor of Theatre Studies
Department: Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts
Degree: BA, MA Drama (Manchester) PhD Lancaster. Theatre Studies
Associated research centres and groups: Centre for Gender and Women's Studies, Centre for the Advanced Study of Contemporary Performance Practice, PALATINE - Performing Arts Learning & Teaching Innovation Network , Theatre Studies
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 has acted as either Director or Co-Director of this organisation. She is currently Director.
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 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).
Potential Doctoral Proposals
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.
Publications since 2001
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
'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.
Associated Keywords: Aesthetics, Contemporary women's writing, Culture and media, Femininities, Gender identities, Performance, Performance and historical studies, Performance practice, Popular culture, Racialisation, Television, Theatre studies
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Contact Details
Tel: 01524 594153
Room: Theatre Studies Annexes,
- FASS Intranet -
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Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Lancaster University
Lancaster LA1 4YD
United Kingdom Tel: 44 0 1524 510851
Fax: 44 0 1524 510857
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