Goldsmiths - University of London

Dr Ben Levitas BA MA D. Phil

I practice an interdisciplinary approach to theatre, in particular integrating theatre history with cultural and political history. At present I teach the course Historicising Theatre on the MA Performance and Culture: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, and a range of undergraduate courses. My approach is informed by a broad training: after gaining an MA in Modern English Literature from Queen Mary College, University of London, I was awarded my D. Phil from the History Faculty, Oxford University, and went on to teach at the School of Politics at Queen's University Belfast before joining the Drama Department at Goldsmiths in 2001. My first book, The Theatre of Nation: Irish Drama and Cultural Nationalism 1890-1916 ( Oxford : Clarendon Press, 2002) was awarded the Michael J. Durkan Prize for Books on Language or Culture by the American Conference for Irish Studies. I currently run, with Dr Ian McBride of Kings College and Professor Clair Wills of Queen Mary College , the interdisciplinary London Irish Studies Seminar based at the Institute of English Studies , Senate House.

Research interests

With a specialist interest in the literature and drama of the period, my research focuses on Irish cultural and political history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Having finished co-editing W. B. Yeats in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2009), I am now working on my next book, a study of politics and performance during the Irish revolutionary decade, 1916-1926.

I am currently supervising PhD students researching 19 th and 20 th -century British and Irish theatre, and would welcome enquiries from any prospective graduate students interested in tackling theatre and/or performance in that period - particularly where their work includes a thoroughgoing historical and/or political dimension.

Selected publications

Books

The Theatre of Nation: Irish Drama and Cultural Nationalism 1890-1916 ( Oxford : Clarendon, 2002).

Edited books

(with David Holdeman), W. B. Yeats In Context ( Cambridge : CUP, 2009)

(with Richard Cave ), Irish Theatre in England ( Dublin : Carysfort Press, 2008).

Chapters

‘J. M. Synge: European Encounters', The Cambridge Companion to J. M. Synge , ed. P. J. Matthews ( Cambridge : CUP, 2009)

‘ Reading and the Revival, 1891-1922', The History of the Irish Book, Vol.5 , ed. Clare Hutton ( Oxford : OUP, 2009)

‘The Abbey Opens: A First Night Revisited', National Theatres of Europe : Constructing National Identities , ed. Stephen Wilmer ( London : Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)

Articles

‘Censorship and Self-Censure in the Plays of J. M. Synge', Princeton University Library Chronicle (Special Issue), 68.1-2, Autumn 2006