Gender, Affect and Care in Twenty-First Century British Theatre
This project aims to study contemporary British theatre from the triple perspective of gender, (the theory of) affects and the ethics of care. The main novelty in relation to the five previous projects carried out by the team (BFF2002-00257, FFI2009 -07598, FFI2012-31842, DAAD Projekt-ID57049392 and FFI2016-75443; see the group's website at https://www.ub.edu/cbtbarcelona/ for more details) consists in putting a broad, intersectional notion of gender in the foreground, framing it in the context of the global expansion of neoliberalism and analyzing it in relation to the concepts of social class, race, health and body, and most particularly in the light of affect studies and the ethics of care. Taking as a starting point the work on affects carried out within the group's previous project (FFI20216-75443), the concepts of crisis ordinariness (Lauren Berlant, 2011) and care crisis (Emma Dowling, 2021), as well as a vision of theatre as “an affect-producing machine” (Erin Hurley, 2014), the project focuses its attention on the work of 21st-century British playwrights – cis- and transgender, LGTBI, queer and gender non-conforming – to ask about the ways in which they thematise and represent (on a formal and aesthetic level) contemporary gendered subjectivities, as well as the circulation of affects between them and the relations of care for each other. The project adopts an intersectional perspective, examining how contemporary British theatre and performance engage with the intersections between gender and neoliberalism, class, race, health and body, and analysing such intersections from the perspective of affect studies and the ethics of care.
1. To contribute to the evolving academic field of 21st-century British theatre on the basis of the contextual, critical, theoretical and methodological parameters expounded above.
2. To produce research results that intervene in the ongoing international academic conversation on 21st-century British theatre.
3. To disseminate our research by publishing it / presenting it in relevant international academic fora.
4. To continue consolidating our research links and collaborations with national and international researchers and research groups working in the same or similar areas.
5. To continue transferring our expertise as well as enriching our own research through collaborations with theatre institutions and practitioners.
6. To continue furthering and consolidating an interest in contemporary British theatre among students and young researchers, particularly through the graduate (MA) courses team members teach at the University of Barcelona.