Susanne Greenhalgh

Susanne Greenhalgh is currently Principal Lecturer in Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies. She took her undergraduate degree in English at Oxford, where she was Bertha Johnson Scholar at St.Anne's College and won the University's Charles Oldham Shakespeare Prize. She studied for a Master's degree at McGill University, Montreal as a Draper's Company Commonwealth Scholar, before returning to Oxford to undertake doctoral research on ritual and ceremony in Shakespeare. She holds a PGCE in Drama from the Institute of Education, London University.

Her current research interests centre on reception studies and the relationship between theatre and screen media, especially in relation to Shakespeare's circulation, adaptation and citation in different periods and settings, including the home, theatre and mass media. She also has particular interests in the representation of terror and terrorism (including the Holocaust), the cultural performance of death and mourning, and the staging of childhood in the theatre and in society.

She is Director of the University Research Centre in Renaissance Studies, and a member of the Centres for Performance and Creative Exchange, and Film and Audio-Visual Cultures.In 2002 she curated a staged reading of Anne Carson's Decreation at Roehampton; the British premiere of this work it featured Carson herself as one of the readers. More recently she has organized international conferences on Shakespeare's Children/Children's Shakespeare(October 2003) and Renaissance Lives (October 2005), and a postgraduate study day on Hamlet after Arden 3(June 2009.

In 2009 she received a British Academy grant for research on radio Shakespeare in North America, and in 2006 she was recipient of the Stephen James Award of the Society for Theatre Research in support of her work on British theatre and television Shakespeare, and an AHRC Research Leave award for a project on the domestic experience and reception of Shakespeare.

Teaching

Susanne teaches courses in both Drama and Film Studies at Roehampton.These include classical Greek and Roman theatre (including contemporary performance history), medieval and renaissance drama, feminist theory and women's writing and performance, theatre in and about war, children's theatre and the performance of childhood, adaptation for the theatre and Shakespeare on stage and screen.

She has also contributed to the MAs in Performance Studies, Women, Gender and Writing, and Children's Literature. She is currently Programme Convenor of the MA in Early Modern Literature and Culture, on which she offers two options, 'Media Shakespeare' and 'Restaging the Renaissance'.

Her administrative roles currently include membership of the School of Arts Board. She has recently finished a four year appointment as External Examiner for the Theatre Arts degree programme, Goldsmths College, University of London.

Recent and forthcoming publications

Forthcoming essays include 'Shakespeare and Radio' Shakespeare and the Arts (Edinburgh University Press, 2010), and entries on 'Television', 'Radio', 'Shakespeare and Childhood/Shakespeare for Children and Young People' and 'Domestic Shakespeare' for the Shakespeare Encyclopedia ed. Patricia Parker, Westport, CT. Greenwood Press.

Shakespeare and Childhood Cambridge University Press 2007 (with Professor Kate Chedgzoy and Professor Robert Shaughnessy)

'This richly detailed volume is a welcome addition to a growing recognition of the significant relations between children's literature and canonical writing for adults...a salient feature of Shakespeare and Childhood is the raising of questions and suggestions for further research...Anyone who wants to pursue the topic would find these an enormously helpful starting point, as is the case with the articles. I will certainly refer to this book frequently and appreciatively. (Archiv fur das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen)

a ‘useful resource not just to Shakespeare scholars but also to scholars of childhood and children’s literature more broadly’ (Children’s Literature Association Quarterly)

a ‘valuable’ collection,
which ‘successfully opens up a new area of study’ (Shakespeare Quarterly)

‘rich with historical and theoretical background…lays the groundwork and reveals the potential’ for further work in the field. (The Journal of British Studies)

'This valuable and important volume...made me think about Shakespeare's plays and characters, childhood, and Renaissance history in new ways, and opened my mind to new possibilities of staging and interpretation...Like its subject matter, Shakespeare and Childhood represents the first steps of a young field moving into mature scholarship. It is an excellent journey into this supposedly underdeveloped area,and I hope that others will now follow in its pioneering tracks.' (Theatre Journal)

'Shakespeare and Childhood is a collection of essays which makes an important intervention in Shakespearean scholarship...The volume is a solid engagement with the changing dimensions in Shakespearean scholarship.' (Senses)

'In an earlier essay, “The Eye of Childhood,” Greenhalgh raised interesting questions about the ways in which “specific concepts of child performance and subjectivity haunt the
process of ‘reinvention or ‘reimagination’” (271) of Shakespeare. In the current essay, she pursues the more ambitious contention that “attending to child actors of Shakespeare, as well as to their roles, reveals how the shifting constructions of childhood current in different eras have been refracted, and perhaps reformulated, through Shakespearean performance”(201). The resulting essay will be of interest to scholars of film as well as of theatrical history.' ( The Lion and the Unicorn)

'Drama' in Janet Maybin and Nicola J.Watson eds. Children's Literature: Approaches and Territories Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009

'This lively and accessible collection of essays by leading scholars...provides a social and literary overview of the field of children's literature.'

'Listening to Shakespeare' in Shakespeare on Film, Television and Radio: The Researcher's Guide' eds. Olwen Terris, Eve-Marie Oesterlen and Luke McKernan BUFVC 2009

‘containing engrossing articles and comprehensive research guidance...an invaluable tool for…looking for pathways through a global, ever-expanding and endlessly fascinating field’

‘Lively, informative and insightful. An indispensable contribution to the critical and historical study of Shakespeare on screen’

'Shakespeare Overheard: Performances, Adaptations and Citations on Radio', in Robert Shaughnessy ed. The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Popular Culture Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007

a ‘fine collection of essays [which] draws together thoughtful and engaging new work by an impressive list of contributors’(Shakespeare Quarterly )

‘There is much to learn about the radio industry and its procedures from Susanne Greenhalgh on Shakespeare and radio’ (Review of English Studies)

'Shakespeare on British radio is brilliantly served by Susanne Greenhalgh's survey. She encapsulates seven decades of broadcasting with impressive clarity, pointing future researchers towards a a wealth of Shakespeare-themed documentaries and audio drama. She sketches the debates between those for whom sound was the ideal medium for dramatic poetry and those who dismissed it as impoverished'. And she shows that "the BBC's self-association with Shakespeare" (p.184) has taken very diverse forms, defying pat ideological labels.' (Viewfinder)

‘ rich in …unexpected collocations, often surprising in the balance of its interests and impressive in the historical and intellectual range its twelve contributors bring to the subject…marquee names of academic culture are on display here… so too are rising stars, writing well…about Shakespeare in music, on screen or on the radio. Each of the chapters, for all they offer material for the specialist, could equally draw in the (perhaps mythical) popular general reader or the interested undergraduate’. (New Theatre Quarterly)

the ‘ extremely rich essays here…[are] the best guide imaginable to this slippery and potentially evanescent area of study’ (Studies in English Literature)

‘set[s] out to rescue the study of Shakespeare and popular culture from the periphery of academic focus…offers a polyphony of playful and provocative perspectives that integrate an interdisciplinary approach to the study of Shakespeare’s relationship with popular culture…gives those that would dismiss the importance of ‘less serious’ cultural forms a right good Cole Porterian kick in the Coriolanus.’(Theatre Research International)


With Professor Kate Chedgzoy) 'Shakespeare and the Cultures of Childhood', special issue of Shakespeare to mark the 200th anniversary of the Lambs' Tales from Shakespear in 2007.2.2.(Winter 2006)


(with Professor Robert Shaughnessy) 'Our Shakespeares: British Television and the Strains of Multiculturalism', Screening Shakespeare in the 21st Century eds. Mark Thornton Burnett and Ramona Wray, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006.

‘this text provides refreshing and current insight’(Film and History )

'This is a collection more than simply quick of the blocks - although it is that too- but a stimulus to broader engagement with the most recent filmic epithenomena.' (Shakespeare Survey)

'The ten essays in this collection…have something new and special to offer. The book is cutting edge not only because it is focused on the latest screen versions of Shakespeare but also because of its twenty-first century approach to the subject.' (Folio )

'Taking a wider look at postcolonial manifestations, Susanne Greenhalgh
and Robert Shaughnessy’s incisive account of contemporary British Shakespeares examines how citation, appropriation, adaptation, and pastiche operate in Michael Waldeman’s documentary of Patterson Joseph’s film, My Shakespeare(2004), detailing how its negotiation with Shakespeare exhibits signs of race, class,and transformation within subcultural groups. They contend that recent British Shakespeare films...not only reveal “the extent to which race has featured only to be ignored” (98) but also raise questions about who can own “Shakespeare
culture” and what it means to live a double life, one foot in english culture, the other in Indian, Asian, or black culture(s)' (Shakespeare Quarterly)


'The Eye of Childhood: Shakespeare, Performance and the Child Subject' in Turning the Page: Children's Literature in Performance, Bern and Oxford: Peter Lang, 2006.

'True to You in My Fashion: Shakespeare on British Broadcast Television' in Shakespeares After Shakespeare ed. Richard Burt, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006.

'Susanne Greenhalgh provides a long and superb introduction to the section on Shakespeare in UK television' (Reference Review)

'Stages of Memory: Imagining Identities in the Holocaust Drama of Deborah Levy, Julia Pascal and Diane Samuels'in Out in the Open: Jewish Women Writers in Twentieth-Century Britain ed Claire Tylee, Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2006.

'Drama' The Routledge International Companion Encyclopedia of Children's Literature ed. Peter Hunt, London: Routledge, 2004.

"'A Space for Me': Jewishness, Memory, and Identity in Julia Pascal's Holocaust Trilogy", in Jewish Women's Writing of the 1990s and Beyond in Great Britain and the United States eds. Ulrike Behlau and Bernhard Reitz, Trier: WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2004


'"Alas poor country!": Documenting the Politics of Performance in Two British Television Macbeths since the 1980s,' in Remaking Shakespeare: Performance across Media, Genres and Cultures. eds. P.Aesbischer, E.Esche and N. Wheale, London: Palgrave 2003.

Recent and forthcoming conference presentations

Susanne's most recent conference presentation was at the Shakespeare Association of America Annual Conference in Washington, April 2009. She has also attended the British Shakespeare Association Conference, Warwick, September 2007;and Comparative Drama Conference, Los Angeles, April 2007. She was an invited participant in the panel on 'Shakespeare and 21st Century Film' at the second British Shakespeare Association Conference, Newcastle, September 2005. With Robert Shaughnessy (Kent) she was awarded a British Academy grant to participate in the 'TV Shakespeare' seminar convened by Peter Holland, at the Shakespeare Association of America Conference in Philadelphia, April 2006. In October 2006 she delivered a plenary lecture on Radio Shakespeare at Queen's University Belfast. She is co-convened with Professor Katherine Schiel (Minnesota) a seminar on 'Shakespeare in the Home'at the Shakespeare Association Conference in Dallas, March 2008, and was an invited speaker at the first symposium of the AHRC-funded Research Network 'Filming and Performing the Renaissance', Queen's University, Belfast, April 2008.

Other conference papers include:

'The Fall of the City: Gender and Genre in Contemporary Appropriations of Greek Drama', 'Dressing Up for War: Transformations of Gender and Genre in the Discourses and Literature of War Conference, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain, March 1999.0

'Waiting to Begin', Talk for the 'Fourth Wall' Season, Royal National Theatre and Public Art Development Trust, Royal National Theatre, May 1999.

'Our Lady of Flowers: the ambiguous politics
of Diana's floral revolution', 3rd
Interdisciplinary Conference on
Holidays, Ritual, Festival, Celebration, and
Public Display, Bowling Green Center
for Popular Culture Studies and the
Department of Popular Culture, Bowling
Green State University, Ohio, May 1999
[Keynote Speaker]

'The Faces of War', Keynote Speech, The Br/
leeding Ground, Magdalena
International Project on War, Chapter,
Cardiff, October 1999 [Keynote Speaker]

'"Alas, poor country!": Documenting the
Politics of Performance in Two British
Television Macbeths since the 1980s', paper
presented at Scaena3: 2nd International
Conference on Shakespeare and his
Contemporaries in Performance, St
John's College, Cambridge, August 2001

'Stages of Memory: Jewishness and Identity
in the work of Levy, Pascal and Samuels',
(paper given at Jewish Women Writers
and Twentieth Century British Culture
Conference, Brunel University, July 2002.

''Children Will See': Performing the Child's
Gaze in Film Versions of A Midsummer
Night's Dream'' the Annual Conference
of the International Board of Books for the
Young (IBBY) British Section, Roehampton University, November 2002.
(summary forthcoming in IBBYLink , May
2003)

'A space for me': Jewishness, Memory and
Identity in Julia Pascal's Holocaust Trilogy'
paper given at Jewish Women's Writing
of the 1990s and Beyond in Great Britain
and the United States Conference. 30
January to 2 February 2003, Mainz 0

Some areas of research supervision

Susanne welcomes enquiries from prospective students interested in researching any aspect of the following:
Shakespeare reception studies, including media adaptations, and Shakespeare in childhood and domestic cultures; theatre, war and terrorism;
Holocaust drama; women's writing and
performance; classical, medieval and
renaissance theatres in original and subsequent performance; children and
childhood in performance; public mourning and memorialization; the relations between theatre and media; the performance culture of the home.

She has supervised dissertations on 'Ibsen's Metatheatre'; 'Women's Performance Art in Britain'; and 'Marlowe's Plays in Performance' and is currently Director of Studies for projects on the performativity of the Greenham Women's Peace Camp and the representatiuon of Sparta in contemporary culture.