© University of Kent - Contact | Feedback | Legal
The University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NZ, T +44 (0)1227 764000
Dr Marion O'Connor
(BA, Toronto; MPhil, PhD, London)
| Reader | |
|---|---|
| Phone: 01227 827448 | Office: NC 10 |
| Email: mfo@kent.ac.uk | on study leave 2010-11 |
Interests 
My academic formation was international and interdisciplinary: B.A. in English with History at St. Michael's College, University of Toronto; M.Phil. in Combined Historical Studies: the Renaissance, at the Warburg Institute, University of London; and Ph.D. in English (with a thesis on twentieth-century adaptations of Shakespearean tragedy) at Bedford College, University of London. I also studied at Yale University and have taught at Indiana University, Bloomington.
Many of my research interests lie in theatre history: the staging of classical (especially Shakespearean) texts; dramatic revivals and theatrical reconstructions; translations and adaptations across time and/or space. After a dozen years (1997-2009) as co-editor of Theatre Notebook, the journal of the Society for Theatre Research, I am now General Editor of STR Publications. I also serve on the Editorial Boards of Early Theatre, the journal associated with Records of Early English Drama, and of Shakespeare, the journal of the British Shakespeare Association.
Conjunctions between verbal and visual representation constitute another area which has long held my attention. My edition of The Witch for the Oxford University Press Collected Works of Thomas Middleton (2007) was informed by knowledge of Renaissance iconography, especially emblem literature.
An AHRB-funded award in 2003/4 enabled me to complete a biography of Lucy Harington Russell, third Countess of Bedford, whose letters I am editing for publication. I am also editing A Woman Killed with Kindness and The Wise Woman of Hoxton for the Oxford University Press edition of the Collected Works of Thomas Heywood. Having edited a masque by Lady Rachel Fane for English Literary Renaissance (2006), I am currently preparing a manuscript of her dramatic / literary work for publication in a Malone Society Miscellany volume.
Research Supervision
I have supervised successful research towards University of Kent postgraduate degrees in English, in Medieval & Tudor Studies and in Drama (for which I have served as Director of Graduate Studies). Topics on which I have overseen work include: Women in Medieval Drama; Drama & Space in 16th-Century Canterbury; John Bale; the 1597 Provincial Tour by the Lord Chamberlain's Men; Alternative Theatre & the State in the 1980s; Charles Marowitz ; the Drama Policy of the Early Arts Council; Edward Bond; Greek Myth in Anouilh, Eliot, O'Neill & Sartre; Howard Barker; Portable Playwrights. As that list indicates, I am interested in supervising projects across the spectrum of Early Modern and Contemporary English Drama and Theatre
On Research Leave throughout academic year 2010-2011
Selected Publications
Books:
- Ed. The Court Beggar and The Queen’s Exchange in the online edition of The Collected Works of Richard Brome, Gen. Ed. R.A.Cave (2010)
- Ed. The Witch in the Oxford University Press Collected Works of Thomas Middleton Gen Eds. G.M.Taylor & J. Lavagnino (2007)
- William Poel & the Elizabethan Stage Society, in "Theatre in Focus" Series (Chadwyck-Healey, 1987)
Some Recent Chapters and Articles:
- `Godly Patronage: Lucy Harington Russell, Countess of Bedford’, in The Intellectual Culture of Puritan Women, ed. Johanna Harris & Elisabeth Scott-Baumann (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010)
- `Lady Rachel Fane's May Day Masque at Apethorpe, 1627', English Literary Renaissance, 36.1 (Winter 2006)
- `William Poel's Letters on Tour in Yorkshire, 1877/8', Theatre Notebook, 59.2 (2005)
- `"Imagine Me, Gentle Spectators": Iconomachy and The Winter's Tale', in A Companion to Shakespeare's Works, IV: The Poems, Problem Comedies, Late Plays, ed. Richard Dutton & Jean E. Howard (Blackwell, 2003)
- `Elizabeth Robins', `Elizabethan Stage Society', `Incorporated Stage Society', `Independent Theatre', `National Theatre Movement: Great Britain', `Vedrenne-Barker Seasons' , and `William Poel', in Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre, ed. Dennis Kennedy (Oxford University Press, 2003)
- `Reconstructive Shakespeare: Reproducing Elizabethan and Jacobean Stages', in Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Stage, ed. Sarah Stanton & Stanley Wells (Cambridge University Press, 2002)
- `Snakeskins, Mirrors and Torches: Theatrical Iconography and Middleton's The Witch', Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama, XLI (2002)