Dr Freya Verlander
Assistant Professor
School of Creative Arts, Performance and Visual Cultures
Email: Freya.Verlander@warwick.ac.uk
Office hour: Tuesdays 11-1pm, or email for appointment (online)
About
I’m interested in skin, bodies, science, and the senses in performance. I’m currently working on my first monograph for Routledge’s Ordinary series which looks at the skin in performance and the everyday. The book’s interested in how the skin works to negotiate relationships between people, things, and systems. It’s also interested in probing the skin in relation to materials. It explores the skin as material, how the skin interacts with different materials, and how different materials might represent the skin in artistic practice. I have also recently explored the politics of (non)visibility of self-harm in these educative works and advances the argument that the skin is simultaneously overdetermined and under-theorised as the site/sight of self-harm. It thinks through the relationship between the skin’s surface, therefore, and its depth as a social structure in representations of self-harm and suggests new contracts with the skin that might be forged.
Prior to my current role, I held Research Assistant positions at Warwick and in the University of Exeter’s Theatre Department. This included working as a consultant on the ‘Atmospheric Theatre: Open Air Performance and the Environment’ project at the University of Exeter. This included working on a Research in Action workshop: Perfuming the Early Modern Stage at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse.
Research Interests
My research interests are, broadly, in exploring the interfaces between science, the senses, and different modes of performance. I’m interested in the skin, in bodies, and in the intersections of public health and performance. I’m interested in questions of power, movement, touch, and in how bodies are constructed. I’m open to supervising MRes or PhD projects in these, or related, areas. To date, I have supported (or currently support) projects in the fields of:
- Contraception and Performance
- Haptics and Accessibility of Performance (co-supervised with Physics)
- Sleep and Performance
Selected Publications
In progress: Ordinary Skin: Extraordinary Intimacies, Routledge.
Forthcoming: ‘Towards New Contracts with the Skin: Bearing Witness to Self-Harm in Performance’ for The Bloomsbury Handbook to Madness in Literature and Visual Culture. ed. anna six. (2025)
Forthcoming: ‘Dances with Dermatologists: Teaching through the Skin’ in Cultural Studies in Skin. Routledge. (2025)
“‘Statecraft’ as ‘Stagecraft’: Performing Public Health and the Production of the “Socially Distanced Spectator”” in the Routledge Companion to Performance and Medicine. Eds. Gianna Bouchard and Alex Mermikedes. Book chapter. (2024).
‘On Scent in Theatre Audience Research: Sensory Mining and Scent-Based Archives,’ Contemporary Theatre Review. 33.3. 2023. pp. 218-239. Peer-reviewed journal article. https://doi.org/10.1080/10486801.2023.2200176
“Did I request thee, Maker, from my minced meat/To mould me infant? Maternal Aesthetics, Provocation, and Practice.” Mothering: Processes, Practices and Performance. Eds. Lena Simic and Emily Underwood-Lee. Routledge. Book chapter. pp. 117-131. 10.4324/9781003231073-13 (2022).
Verlander, Freya and Chloe Preedy, ‘Perfuming the Early Modern Stage,’ in ‘Stormy Weather,’ Globe Magazine, Summer 2022. p.57. Public engagement promotional material.
‘(Skin)Aesthetics (The First Manifesto),’ in Studies in Theatre and Performance. Peer-reviewed journal article. 2022. pp. 4-17. 10.1080/14682761.2021.1912489
“Theatres of Contagion: Transmitting Early Modern to Contemporary Performance Edited by Fintan Walsh. London: Methuen Drama, Bloomsbury” Theatre Survey. 62. 2. 2021, pp. 240–242. Review. doi:10.1017/S004055742100017X.
‘Touch (Sk)Interrupted? ‘Skin Hunger’ A Socially Distanced Performance Installation,’ Performance Research Journal.27.2. 2023. Pp.7-15. Peer-reviewed journal article. https://doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2022.2116870)*
‘Ecologies of Skin, Gender and Landscape’ – And an Experiment with Practice as Research” in The Polyphony Conversations Across the Medical Humanities. Online magazine. 23. 07.2021.https://thepolyphony.org/2021/07/23/ecologies-of-skin-gender-and-landscape-an-experiment-with-practice-as-research/
‘Matriarchy and Accumulation on a Two World Scale? Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber (2000)’ in Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction. 49.2. 2020. pp.71-83.
‘‘You’re Certainly Edward Sexton with that Needle and Thread’: Fantasies of Sharing, Tearing, and Wearing the ‘Common Skin’ in American Horror Story’. The European Journal of American Culture. 38.1. 2019. pp. 83-95. Peer-reviewed journal article. DOI: 10.1386/ejac.38.1.83_1
‘Human Waste in the Workplaces of George Saunders’ Pastoralia (2000)’ Colloquy Journal. 35/36. 2018. pp. 99-126. Peer-reviewed journal article. doi.org/10.26180/5c11d8229355a.
‘Beetle Skins: The Beetle and the Male Body in Richard Marsh’s The Beetle' in Harts & Minds Journal. 3.2. 2017. pp. 67-82. Peer-reviewed journal article.
Teaching
I won the Warwick Award for Teaching Excellence (WATE) in 2024, and I teach on the following modules:
Ways of Seeing (1st year module)
Ways of Doing (2nd year module)
Research Dissertation (3rd year module)
Musical Theatre: Contexts, Themes, Analysis (2nd year module)