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In Memoriam - Professor Jim Davis

Prof Jim DavisIt 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.

There will be an event to celebrate Jim’s life and work on 6 January 2024 12pm-4pm in the Studios in the Faculty of Arts Building on the University of Warwick's campus. Anyone is welcome (colleagues, friends, alumni etc). This will be a hybrid event, so if you cannot attend in person, but would like to join us online, that's also possible. Please RSVP to Dr David Coates - D.J.Coates@warwick.ac.uk

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Dr Julia Peetz, our Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, has been nominated for the prestigious TAPRA prize for her article

'The Counter-Theatricality of Right-Wing Populist Performance’, Studies in Theatre and Performance (2021): https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14682761.2021.1964818

Thu 05 May 2022, 11:33 | Tags: Publications Research Dr Julia Peetz Awards

Dr Julia Peetz's Chapter Publication and Book Launch

Resonances of Butler Dr Julia Peetz has published a chapter in the new volume Bodies that Still Matter: Resonances of Judith Butler. The book was published in July and a formal book launch will take place online on Zoom on 21 September 2021 at 20:00 CEST. The book has contributions from Butler herself, as well as Jean-Luc Nancy, Erika Fischer-Lichte and many others. You can find out more about the volume here and you can book a place at the virtual book launch using this link.
Fri 03 Sep 2021, 12:02 | Tags: Publications Research Dr Julia Peetz

Book Chapter Published and Book Launch: Dr Yvette Hutchison

Yvette Hutchison has a chapter entitled 'Calling everything into question: articulations of black women in post-1994 South African commemoration' in Gender, Transitional Justice and Memorial Arts Global Perspectives on Commemoration and Mobilization, edited by Jelke Boesten and Helen Scanlon, published by Routledge. This book comes out of an AHRC funded project in the Department of International Development, King’s College London & Politics at University of Capetown, SA, for which Yvette was an advisor. The project looked at the role of post-conflict memorial arts in bringing about gender justice in transitional societies, modelling examples in the UK, Chile and SA. It brings together transitional justice, memory studies, post-conflict peacebuilding, human rights and gender studies.

The book will be launched on Thursday 27 May at 1pm GMT, from Lima, London, Cape Town, and Nairobi with Nompilo Ndlovu, Pena Brock, Alex Hibbett, Rachel Kerr & Ester Muinjangue on the panel. Contact Yvette if you want to join the launch.

Fri 21 May 2021, 12:14 | Tags: Publications Events Dr Yvette Hutchison

Oxford Handbook of Politics and Performance Published

Oxford Handbook Politics Performance Congratulations to Prof. Silvija Jestrovic and Dr. Milija Gluhovic on the publication of the their Oxford Handbook of Politics and Performance.

Fri 26 Mar 2021, 11:39 | Tags: Publications Research Prof. Silvija Jestrovic

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