Dan Horton

Currently, Dan is a full-time English teacher at a state secondary academy in South London specialising in teaching drama, prose, and poetry textual analysis to Key Stages 3, 4, and 5.

Dan is interested in performative masculinity and its mimetic representation on the stage and in script. Taking a particular interest in ancient Greek tragedy, Shakespearean tragedy, and early-to-mid C20th American tragedy, Dan is exploring the (writer’s, director’s, actor’s) possible intent and the historical and sociological context behind the characterisation of male tragic heroes (and other male characters). It is of great interest to him how these characters represent not only the societally-constructed concept of masculinity, but also how their created worlds (and audiences) react to and receive these creations.

Thesis description

In an as-yet untitled thesis, Dan is looking at the presentation of hegemonic, toxic, and sub-cultural masculinity in the adaptations of (and productions and scripts inspired by) ancient Greek tragedy and myth. He is focusing on characterisation and context and how these elements combine to create mimetic representations of performative masculinity – and what an audience could learn and infer from these representations about contextual masculinity.

Dan's work is supervised by Dr Angeliki Varakis-Martin and Dr Margherita Laera.