Associate Professor

Email: m dot franks at warwick dot ac dot uk

FAB5.13
Faculty of Arts Building, University Road
University of Warwick
Coventry CV4 7AL

About

Victorian, modern, and contemporary theatre, along with book history, media studies, and the digital humanities. My book Subscription Theater (UPenn, 2020; shortlisted for Theatre Book Prize) situates late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century theatre subscription within a wider phenomenon of civic subscription, or collective funding. I'm currently working on two related projects: a study of theatre and public service messaging since 1939, and a cultural history of the Central Office of Information (1946-2011). With David Coates, I co-convene the Theatre and Performance Research Association's Theatre and Performance Histories working group.

Teaching and supervision

I co-convene the joint-honours degree QW34 English and Theatre Studies and teach on the joint-honours degree QW26 Film and Literature. I have supervised dissertations on modern and contemporary theatre and media, and welcome dissertation and thesis proposals in my fields of interest.

Selected publications

• Subscription Theater: Democracy and Drama in Britain and Ireland, 1880-1939 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020).
• “From Public Library Prankster to Playwright: Joe Orton and Postwar Britain’s Nanny State.” Book History 20 (2017): 394-423.
• “Laboratory, Library, Database: London’s Avant-Garde Drama Societies and Ephemeral Repertoire.” Modernism/modernity 24:3 (September 2017): 549-574.
• “Schoolchildren, or Citizen Shareholders?: Provincial Repertory Audiences, Letters to the Editor, and Public Subscription.” Theatre Survey 58:2 (May 2017): 186-208.

Qualifications

• BA (Columbia)
• PhD (Harvard)