Tuesday, 20 March 2018
Thursday, 1 March 2018
ANZAMEMS repost
Copied below – short blurb on my doctoral research and description of a favourite office object, featured this week on the ANZAMEMS Postgraduate and Early Career Researchers' Facebook group (thankyou!)
My doctorate research is on modern revivals and reinventions of the medieval York mystery play cycle, exploring the modern cultural needs that have looked to revive and sustain the play cycle in (and for) current and future generations. I am interested in how the the cycle’s role and intent differ today from the Middle Ages, and in what ways they remain the same or comparable. I am also intrigued by what draws people to modern productions of the cycle – why the cycle is still played today, the expectations with which audiences approach the plays, and how contemporary viewers experience performances.
This month I leave on a research trip to the UK, Canada and US for archival work, interviews with academics, cast and creatives involved in recent productions of the plays, and observation of the September waggon production of the plays in the York streets.
This is Nicholas, my Hubberholme knitted mouse. Named after Nicholas Blackburn, a fifteenth-century mercer who features prominently in my MA thesis, my mother brought him back from the UK for me, along with the photographs of the Hubberholme church rood screen I neglected to take on my MA research trip and which proved vital to my thesis! The Hubberholme screen is one of only two surviving medieval rood screens in England; the church is also known for the mice (not medieval) carved into the oak pews – the trademark of the woodcarver Robert Thompson, ‘the mouseman of Kilburn.’
My doctorate research is on modern revivals and reinventions of the medieval York mystery play cycle, exploring the modern cultural needs that have looked to revive and sustain the play cycle in (and for) current and future generations. I am interested in how the the cycle’s role and intent differ today from the Middle Ages, and in what ways they remain the same or comparable. I am also intrigued by what draws people to modern productions of the cycle – why the cycle is still played today, the expectations with which audiences approach the plays, and how contemporary viewers experience performances.
This month I leave on a research trip to the UK, Canada and US for archival work, interviews with academics, cast and creatives involved in recent productions of the plays, and observation of the September waggon production of the plays in the York streets.
This is Nicholas, my Hubberholme knitted mouse. Named after Nicholas Blackburn, a fifteenth-century mercer who features prominently in my MA thesis, my mother brought him back from the UK for me, along with the photographs of the Hubberholme church rood screen I neglected to take on my MA research trip and which proved vital to my thesis! The Hubberholme screen is one of only two surviving medieval rood screens in England; the church is also known for the mice (not medieval) carved into the oak pews – the trademark of the woodcarver Robert Thompson, ‘the mouseman of Kilburn.’
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)