I’m sorry but HOW has Grace Lavery got MORE heat for teaching queer theory and being falsely accused of grooming than the absurd number of male professors who have ACTUALLY GROOMED THEIR STUDENTS?
It’s keeping a bear in your student digs
It’s toking on opium rather than cigs
It’s swimming in the Hellespont to get your kicks
It’s dying of fever when you’re just thirty six
.....Isn’t it Byronic
Friends, colleagues, theatre-lovers:
@The_Globe
currently has no income and no other funding. If it doesn’t get government help, it will never reopen. If you can spare the money, please text GLOBE5 to 70460 to donate £5 (UK only).
MY BOOK HAS ARRIVED. AM AUTHOR.
@Ardenpublisher
have made it look so beautiful: what a gorgeous production. Utterly myself with joy. Will keep one on my person at all times. Going to be insufferable all month.
*Coming up with ideas for earning money after working as a lecturer in English Literature*
*speaks into dictaphone*
A women-only airline called 'Jane Air'
*takes rest of day off*
I really wish my university email account wouldn’t automatically filter emails about next term’s teaching into spam, but I guess it’s partly my fault for naming a module ‘Witches, Bitches, Whores, and Shrews’.
Today I had confirmation that I have been approved by the Oxford University Press delegates, and am now, officially, a contributing editor to the New Oxford Shakespeare's final volume (the 'Complete Alternative Versions'). Going to need a bit of a sit down and a stiff drink.
Thank you to absolutely everyone who has liked, commented, or messaged since I told Twitter I am non-binary. Especially those who came to my defence over people more concerned with grammar than lived experience!
Not sure what use I have for bonus copies of my own book, so.... Competition time! I’m giving away two copies of Shakespeare’s Body Language in paperback. I’ll pay postage to UK or Ireland. Like this tweet if you want to enter and I’ll draw out two random names on Friday!
@john_boyne
John. Emer is one of my best friends. I’m not here to explain or defend her sexuality or its labels but she IS NOT STRAIGHT. And she does not owe you any explanation for who she is and what she calls it.
Seeing as I'm applying for a job during the strike action this week and need a reference from my former supervisor, I thought I'd email KCL's Vice-Chancellor Professor Ed Byrne and ask him to provide one.
John Boyne has quoted one of my best friends out of context while also repeating his opinion that she's straight (she isn't). He has done this behind a paywall in an article for the Independent.
Now he's off on his 'I've been cancelled' tour to stoke self-pity and book sales.
This week I signed a contract, so it’s official: I’m editing The Tempest for Arden’s Performance Editions. It’s a great series that gives actors and practitioners a truly helpful and pragmatic approach to getting Shakespeare’s text on its feet, and I’m delighted to be involved.
Lying wins you elections, so before all the centrists lay into the basic tenets of humane socialism let’s all just ponder the fact that this election was won by mendacious cynicism and not lost by responsible compassion
I became a scholar of c16th and c17th England because I found all the political and national turmoil immensely exciting. But I don't want to actually LIVE through this shit.
#stopthecoup
For those who don’t know, Graham Linehan has accused lecturer Grace Lavery of grooming her students because she teaches queer theory.
Let
That
Sink
In.
@john_boyne
Further: you’re a writer. You know that language shifts in usage and meaning over time. And while you don’t have to personally like these changes or use them yourself, you don’t get to gatekeep how other people use such words as a reclamation of agency.
I finally have my own copy in my hands! They arrived at my parents’ place in the UK three hours after I got there. My Mum and Dad got to watch me open the package containing my own edition of the very play they took my name from. So worth the wait. A happy day
@Ardenpublisher
Unprompted courteous reminder to white people to read this excellent article in Teen Vogue about digital blackface and why it's worth thinking about your GIF choices. I may in fact set up a google calendar prompt so that I post this every month.
Happy publication day, first book. I wrote the dedication when I thought I was leaving academia a year ago. Thank you so much
@Ardenpublisher
for getting my work out. Link to buy here, excited to hear people’s thoughts.
Matt Hancock in his cupboard. He has some books in the background but it's like the sort of shelf you'd see in a pub that has chucked a few books in for people to read if they fancy it. No real credibility grab at all, more a nod to the obligation to have books.
I just began a lecture by referencing the film Shakespeare in Love, then realised that it came out before my students were BORN, and had to **take a minute**
Had no idea this photo existed until today. My Grandma and me at
@The_Globe
in October 1999. Filled with emotion, gratitude - and sadness that I can’t fly back to attend her funeral. I know she would have understood, but still. Thank you for everything.
This afternoon, my Grandma died peacefully in her sleep at her care home in Wooton Bassett. She was 92. She and my Grandad were the first people to take me to
@The_Globe
(I was 12 and had a school project on Shakespeare). I’m so grateful for all her generosity and kindness.
Thanks so much to
@benwillbond
and
@realmatbaynton
for last night's
#BBCGhosts
' finale. I'm meant to be a serious Drama professor but my marker of good acting remains whether or not performers can stay in character *while running* and S03E06 is a perfect example of this.
I believe I can tell twitter now: yesterday I had an interview and I'm delighted to say that I'll be joining
@UCD_English
as a Lecturer in Renaissance Literature until January 2019!
It’s been months, but it still astonishes me that we turned THIS into THIS (I suspect the first photo was taken with a wide lens by the estate agent to try and make it look bigger)
@Peston
Why? Are the students not being taught? Or are staff - such as myself - actually working even harder than in previous years to enable learning to continue? Where is the saving being made?
(But let's be honest, tuition fees should never have been introduced in the first place.)
The University Council and Board of the College need to sign off, but this morning I got the email informing me that the promotions committee approved me for tenure. It still hasn’t remotely sunk in, so I’m not even feeling much relief yet, but I’m really so grateful.
He's not an ally. He's an idiot. We already knew this - the actual Holocaust Museum says The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas 'should be avoided by anyone who studies or teaches the history of the Holocaust'. And now he leads pile-ons for queer women on social media.
Trans day of visibility you say? I’ve been rather quiet about this but my gender is certainly fluid and I am starting to embrace it. Happy to still be she, but also very happy to be they. Thanks.
#TDOV
It is my 32nd birthday and I just got an email from
@Ardenpublisher
saying that the advance copies of my first book have arrived and isn’t that just LOVELY 😊
@lottelydia
Also, so much of what I’m reading here is resentment - not without cause, motherhood in a patriarchal society is a tough gig - but also seasoned with the bitter desire to bring everyone else down with her if she herself cannot escape.
I don't know who needs to hear this, but if we're protecting women and girls from being groomed and abused by older male academics, we need to do the same for men and boys (and non-binary folk) who are also targeted in this way.
Yes, I'm upset about Notre Dame and I'm also upset about Grenfell and Brexit and Climate Change... It's entirely possible to be concerned about lots of different things all at once, and just posting about one thing on one day doesn't negate how much you care about the rest.
If you thought I wouldn’t go over and talk to a complete stranger because they had a puppy in a bicycle basket, you’d be dead wrong. This baby dog is 8 weeks old and her name - I’m not making this up - is Shamozzle.
I am genuinely rather baffled by all the new live streamed talks, reading groups, seminars, and broadcasts that are happening during lockdown. How anyone has the energy to engage with anything extra at the moment is beyond me. I can barely get my normal workload done.
Worcester College Oxford have honoured all of their offers regardless of A-level results. Superb to see. Now: make this the default position of admissions departments
PUBLICATION KLAXON! Thrilled to announce that The Palgrave Handbook of Shakespeare's Queens is now OUT and that I have a chapter in it on female solidarity. Unofficially, this piece is dedicated to my wonderful feminist friends, mentors, and support network.
I came out to my parents as bisexual and non-binary today, just on the off-chance they hadn't googled me recently and seen my Twitter bio.
And they accept it and they love me.
So let's turn up that bass line and live with honesty and gratitude!
Just got a lovely email from Arden Bloomsbury to tell me that my book is officially *in production* (yay/eep) so what better time to pre-order my textual baby?
I have decided that the time has come to start thinking about doing an edited collection on the idea of the Shakespearean actor and how this has shifted. Anyone interested in collaborating?
Pickford is the Bernard Black of goal-keeping.
Pickford: What do they want from me? Why can't they leave me alone? I mean, what do they want from me?
Kane: They want to score goals
Pickford: Yeah, but why me? Why do they come to me?
Kane: Well, because you save goals.
#ENG
This happens every single Summer: I teach all year, with no space for research during term time, and then when I finally get to the end of the academic year I have to re-learn my research and writing habits. Please tell me I'm not the only one!
Why do theatres always put a really inappropriate Shakespeare quote on their wine list? Sure, this Rioja is great for when you’re being haunted at a dinner party by the ghost of a friend you had murdered
So, I'm not going to beat about the bush (ahem). I'm writing about innuendo in A Midsummer Night's Dream and basically I need to find out when fisting became a sex act. Any ideas? Is it pre- or post-early modern?
Here is my one and only Halloween tweet. In Thriller, the Vincent Price spoken word bit rhymes except for the rather wonky 'Creatures crawl in search of blood / To terrify your neighbourhood.' But Rod Temperton, who wrote it, was from the Midlands. So it does rhyme, in his accent
As a grad student, an academic preyed on many of us at a conference. We consoled ourselves that we would inherit the field and make it better and more just.
We are trying to make academia a safer place. Stop giving platforms to predators. Stop promoting their work and events.
(One of my family members failed the 11+ exam. She now has a Ph.D. in neurobiology from Cambridge. Writing children off at 11 is barbaric and doesn't work.)
I came out as genderfluid a couple of months ago and today for the first time in a shop the staff-member helping me said 'Sorry, I just used she/her pronouns. Would you prefer something else?'
I know 'passing' is complicated and never perfect but it was a nice moment.
Last night I got to launch my first book. Thanks so much to
@Ardenpublisher
for publishing me, my new work home
@DramaTCD
for hosting, and
@DrFarahKC
for being there and saying such wonderful things.
Three years ago today I married
@OisinWall
and got very merrily drunk in the most expensive dress I will ever wear with the best people in my life on a small island off the coast of Devon.
Somehow missed the email last week (thanks, week 1!) but just found out I've got funding to take me to
@The_Globe
archives and work towards a book proposal. Fully delighted that I can come to London for a couple of weeks this summer! Reunions afoot
@ProfFarahKC
@will_tosh
Academics: DO NOT APPLY FOR THESE ADJUNCT JOBS at Wright State University. Staff there are currently on strike and the administration have taken to advertising their jobs.