History, Memory, Performance

by David M. Dean (Editor), Yana Meerzon (Editor), Kathryn Prince (Editor)

History, Memory, Performance is an interdisciplinary collection of essays exploring performances of the past in a wide range of trans-national and historical contexts ranging from seventeenth century New France and nineteenth-century Russia to modern Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, Lebanon, Russia, and the United States. Contributions from theatre scholars and public historians address issues of shared interest to the disciplines of theatre studies and theatre history, performance studies, history, and public history, coalescing around the concept of memory, both collective and individual. Wide-ranging and theoretically engaged, History, Memory, Performance is especially timely given the historical turn in theatre studies and the performative turn in historical studies.

322 pages, Hardcover

First published November 19, 2014

About the author

David Dean specialises in public history, particularly historical representation and performance in museums, film, and theatre, and early modern British history. His most recent book is History, Memory, Performance (Palgrave, 2015), an interdisciplinary co-edited collection of essays exploring performances of the past in a variety of contexts. He is editing A Companion to Public History (Wiley-Blackwell) and writing Shakespeare’s England: A Cultural History, 1558-1649 (with Dr Kathryn Prince, Wiley-Blackwell). In 2013 he guest edited a special issue of Peace and Conflict, focusing on Canadian museums as sites for historical understanding and social justice. His most recent article is an exploration of the film depiction of the Elizabethan Settlement in Shekhar Kapur’s Elizabeth. David is organising this year’s Shannon Lectures in History on the theme Performing History: Re-Staging the Past.
After completing his Cambridge doctorate, David taught at Goldsmiths’ College, University of London for eleven years before coming to Carleton where he has been Full Professor since 2000. From 2008 until 2012 David was Company Historian to Ottawa’s National Art Centre’s English Theatre, working on productions such as Macbeth, Mother Courage, the Christmas Carol, Romeo and Juliet, Vimy and King Lear. One of the founding members of the Department’s MA in Public History, which he co-ordinated for six years, David was co-founder of the Carleton Centre for Public History, and currently shares the directorship with Dr James Opp. David’s current teaching repertoire includes undergraduate courses such as Early Modern Britain, History at the Movies, and a seminar on early modern witchcraft and social disorder, as well as the core MA in Public History seminar on Museums, Public Memory and National Identify and an optional seminar, Narrativity and Performance in Public History. He has supervised twenty-seven postgraduates over the past six years. David has been active in Ottawa’s Workers’ History Museum as a collaborator, advisor and patron; he is a Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge and a Fellow of Britain’s Royal Historical Society.