Theatre & Performance Studies News
In Memoriam - Professor Jim Davis
It is with a very heavy heart that we write to let you know that Professor Jim Davis passed away on Saturday 4th November following a stroke. Everyone who had the pleasure of encountering Jim will appreciate that this is a huge loss for his family, friends, colleagues, collaborators and the wider research community. He was a fantastic scholar and unwavering champion for the discipline and theatre historiography. He was such an important part of the Theatre and Performance family at the University of Warwick and will be missed for his leadership, mentorship, friendship and unfailing sense of fun and mischief.
Jim Davis joined Warwick in 2004 as Head of Department (2004-2009) after eighteen years teaching Theatre Studies at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, where he was latterly Head of the School of Theatre, Film and Dance. In Australia he was also President of the Australasian Drama Studies Association and member of the Board of Studies of the National Institute of Dramatic Art. Prior to leaving for Australia he spent ten years teaching in London at what is now Roehampton University. He co-organised many conferences including for the International Federation of Theatre Research (IFTR) in New South Wales and at Warwick. He convened Historiography Working Groups for both IFTR and for TaPRA. He served as an editor for the journal Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film.
He published widely and with considerable critical acclaim in the area of nineteenth-century British theatre. His most recent bookComic Acting and Portraiture in Late-Georgian and Regency England (2015) won the TaPRA David Bradby Prize for Research in International Theatre and Performance in 2017 and was shortlisted for the 2015 TLA George Freedley Memorial Award. His other publications include Theatre & Entertainment (2016), Dickensian Dramas: Plays from Charles Dickens Volume II (2017) and European Theatre Performance Practice Vol 3 1750-1900 (editor, 2014). He was also joint author of a study of London theatre audiences in the nineteenth century Reflecting the Audience: London 1840-1880 (2001), which was awarded the 2001 Theatre Book Prize. He contributed numerous chapters including essays on nineteenth-century acting to the Cambridge History of British Theatre and on audiences to the Cambridge Companion to Victorian and Edwardian Theatre. He also published many articles in Theatre Journal, Theatre Survey, Theatre Notebook, Essays in Theatre, Themes in Drama, New Theatre Quarterly, Nineteenth Century Theatre, Theatre Research International and The Dickensian. He was also responsible for many of the theatrical entries in The Oxford Readers' Companion to Dickens and contributed to the Oxford Encyclopaedia of Theatre and Performance, The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Stage Actors and Acting and the New Dictionary of National Biography. For several years he wrote an annual review of publications on nineteenth-century English Drama and Theatre for The Year's Work in English Studies.
An event to celebrate Jim’s life and work was held on 6 January 2024 12pm-4pm in the Studios in the Faculty of Arts Building on the University of Warwick's campus.
Performance and Politics on the New Silk Roads summer school - Call for Applications
Venue: The Centro Culturale Don Orione Artigianelli, Venice
Launched in 2013, and hailed as the largest geo-economics initiative in history, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has largely been discussed as a consciously designed geo-political and economic project. However, it is also an initiative, a statement of intention, a performance of China on the global stage, and a kind of ‘development theater.’ In this one week summer school for postgraduate students we ask: what does it mean to ‘revive’ and perform Silk Roads for the twenty-first century, and how is this geopolitical chronotype productive for politics and theatre and performance studies?
We shall examine the performances of state actors who, typically co-produce the ways in which China is now projecting itself as a benevolent new development actor. But we shall also consider the counter performances that the BRI sparks: performances of acquiescence (from business elites and supportive local groups) as well as performances of resistance (from labor organizers, environmentalists, and anti-corruption campaigners). We shall discuss Belt and Road as a site of cultural production and cultural politics and the ways theatre and performance artists, visual artists, musicians, and filmmakers from the countries along the New Silk Road routes and corridors (Western Europe, the Balkans, Central and South-East Asia, Middle East, Africa, etc.) engage, critique and represent the underbelly of the contemporary silk roads – contemporary linkages between the circulations of peoples and desires, the global spread of the capitalist market and economic globalization, and the human and environmental catastrophes they unleash.
Focusing on selected cities along the New Silk Roads (Venice, Trieste, Belgrade, Athens . . .) we shall also examine the contested nature of BRI-driven, infrastructural, material restructuring of urban space and its effects on the contours of lives, places, and socio-natures. Through talks, workshops, and demonstrations the participants will be exposed to a variety of disciplinary approaches and ways in which they could be combined to build a new critical framework to understand the New Silk Roads performatively as a relational and intersectional critical concept and practice. The summer school will also explore historical and art historical dimensions of the silk roads and the Venetian links to them through site visits within the lagoon city.
Venue: The Centro Culturale Don Orione Artigianelli, Zattere, Dorsoduro, 909/A. The venue is in the centre of Venice near the Academia Bridge. See: https://donorione-venezia.it/home-en
https://donorione-venezia.it/conference-centreprogr
Schedule
Monday, June 27
New and Old Silk Road Imaginaries and Realities
18.00 -18.30 Registration
18.30-20.30
Welcome and presentation of summer school: MILIJA GLUHOVIC
Keynote 1
JULIA C. STRAUSS, Belt and Road: New and Old Imaginaries of Connections
Tuesday, June 28
Theatre, Performance and Politics along New Silk Roads
9.30-11.30
Seminar
SILVIJA JESTROVIC / MARCUS TAN / MILIJA GLUHOVIC, Theatre and Performance on the New Silk Roads
11.30-11.45 Coffee break
11.45-13.00 Seminar with participants I
13.00- 14.30 Lunch
14.30- 16.00
Seminar
JULIA C. STRAUSS, Belt and Road Initiative and Environmental Issues
Wednesday, June 29
Cultural Politics and Diplomacy along New Silk Roads
Keynote 2
TIM WINTER, University of Western Australia, The Silk Road: connecting histories and futures
11.00 -11.15 Coffee break
11.15 - 13.00 Seminar with participants II
13.15-15.00 Lunch
15.00-18.00
Workshop
Venice and New Silk Roads – Performative investigation through Venice
Convened by MARK FLEISHMAN
Thursday, June 30
Venice and East-West Encounters from the Renaissance to the present
9.30am -13.00 Venice and silk roads site visits with LOUISE BOURDUA / LUCA MOLA
13.15pm -14.30 Lunch
14.30-15:30pm
Workshop
Venice and New Silk Roads – Performative investigation through Venice
convened by MARK FLEISHMAN
15.30-15.45 Coffee break
15.45-17.30
Keynote 3
ANNE DUNLOP, Mongol Eurasia in Fourteenth-Century Veneto
Friday, July 1
New Silk Roads and Interdisciplinary Methodologies
9.00-10.30
Seminar
BHAVNA DAVE, BRI in Central Asia: Performance, Protests, Spectacles, Effects
10.30-10.45 Coffee break
10.45-12.45
Seminar
Performance and Politics along New Silk Roads: Interdisciplinary Methodologies and Interventions
SILVIJA JESTROVIC/ MARK FLEISHMAN / MARCUS TAN / BHAVNA DAVE / MILIJA GLUHOVIC
12:45-13:00
Closing Remarks
SILVIJA JESTROVIC
SUMMER SCHOOL FACULTY AND GUESTS
Professor Louise Bourdua, History of Art, University of Warwick
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/scapvc/arthistory/staff/lb
Dr Bhavna Dave, SOAS, University of London
https://www.soas.ac.uk/staff/staff36175.php
Professor Anne Dunlop, Herald Chair of Fine Arts at the University of Melbourne https://findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/profile/746793-anne-dunlop
Professor Mark Fleishman, CTDPS, University of Cape Town
http://www.ctdps.uct.ac.za/CTDPS/staff/MarkFleishman
Dr Milija Gluhovic, Theatre Studies, University of Warwick, https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/scapvc/theatre/staff/dr_milija_gluhovic
Professor Silvija Jestrovic, Theatre and Performance Studies, University of Warwick,
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/scapvc/theatre/staff/silvija_jestrovic/
Dr Luca Mola, Department of History, University of Warwick, https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/people/staff_index/lmola/
Professor Julia C Strauss, SOAS, University of London, https://www.soas.ac.uk/staff/staff36176.php
Dr Marcus Cheng Chye Tan, Visual and Performing Arts, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, https://dr.ntu.edu.sg/cris/rp/rp01583
Professor Tim Winter, School of Social Sciences, University of Western Australia https://uwa.academia.edu/TimWinter
HOW TO APPLY
Applicants must submit the following materials (in English) by May 31, 2022:
- a CV (1 page max. Including a list of publications (if any)
- a covering letter explaining how participation in the Summer School will benefit your research and stating financial needs (500 words max.)
- One letter of recommendation
Please send these materials to m.gluhovic@warwick.ac.uk and s.jestrovic@warwick.ac.uk
Applicants accepted in the program will be notified by June 1, 2022, via email. They must confirm their participation by June 5, 2022. Registration fee are also due by June 5, 2022. For further information please write to m.gluhovic@warwick.ac.uk and s.jestrovic@warwick.ac.uk
£100 Registration Fee (including lunches and entry tickets for museums)
EXEMPTIONS AND BURSARIES:
The IAS is offering the following bursaries:
10 bursaries covering accommodation (based on 2 persons sharing a room)
If you are not able to access funds to attend, we offer a limited amount of accommodation bursaries based on financial need and merit of the application. Please indicate in your letter if you would need a bursary, provide a rationale for your request specifying if your attendance is contingent on receiving a grant.
Selected students are required to confirm their registration by paying fees and emailing their receipt to m.gluhovic@warwick.ac.uk and s.jestrovic@warwick.ac.uk