dear all
– please join us in our Research Seminar at Brunel next week:
Wednesday November 29: 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM
Drama Studio, Gaskell Building 048, Brunel University, Cleveland Rd. London UB8
3PH
Holly Maples : “Acting Out in Public: Display, Decency and 19th
Century American Female Spectatorship”
"Acting Out in Public" comes from Holly Maples’ current book project, The
Erotic Spectator, examining female spectatorship in 19th and early 20th century
America. Much of the struggle against “indecent entertainment” focused on the
moral degradation of American women of the “middling sorts.” How women
negotiated their position in society as symbols of American virtue and
integrity, while also using it to push the boundaries of their place in the
public sphere through the politics of “pernicious pleasure” is at the heart of
this project. This project intersects archival research with theories of
embodied spectatorship and sensorial history.
Bio
Holly Maples is a Senior Lecturer in Theatre at Brunel University London. Both
a theatre practitioner and a scholar, she has directed productions in the
United States, Ireland and the United Kingdom. She formerly taught at
University of East Anglia, Trinity College Dublin and the University of
Michigan Ann Arbor. Maples research addresses how popular entertainment,
heritage performance, and commemorative festivals reflect and shape societal
change. Her book, Culture War: Conflict, Commemoration and the Contemporary
Abbey Theatre, was published in the Reimagining Ireland series in 2011 (Peter
Lang). She is particularly interested in investigating "performative publics,"
examining the public's manifestations of national, embodied, and collective
identity through popular entertainment such as parades, national festivals,
social dance, theatre spectatorship and heritage performance.
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Research Seminar Theme: Precarity and the Politics of Art: Performative and
Critical Empowerment after Democracy
Performance Research Seminar Coordinator: Johannes Birringer
Contact: +44 (0)1895 267 343
Check our whole series at:
http://people.brunel.ac.uk/dap/ResearchSeminarSeries.html
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