Skip to main content
Northwestern School of Communication

Tracy C. Davis

Professor Emerita
CV
Critical media theory encompassing transnational and transregional mobility of performance technologies and themes (pre-modern to present) (In development for performance) The Great Sea Serpent

Department

Theatre

Area(s) of Expertise

British Theatre History, Cold War Studies, Feminist theory, Gender and Theatre, Museum Studies, Performance Theory, Performing Arts, Research Methodology, Social Activism and Impact, Theatre History
Tracy C. Davis

 

Tracy C. Davis specializes in the historiography and methodologies of theatre and performance research, the transnational and transregional mobility of performance technologies, 19th-century theatre history, economics and business history of theatre, performance theory, gender and theatre, museum studies, and Cold War studies. Her numerous monographs, edited collections, and book series encompass a wide range of topics advancing perspectives on material and social history, the theoretical terrain of performance, and interdisciplinary research. These are complemented by over 100 articles in journals dedicated to the arts, humanities, and social sciences. She served as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in The Graduate School, the Theatre Department’s Mentoring Champion, was for a long time the Director of the Interdisciplinary PhD in Theatre and Drama, and has provided mentoring trainings for faculty, postdocs, staff, graduate students, and undergraduates to improve mentoring skill, at Northwestern and at universities across the globe. She is Past-President of the American Society for Theatre Research and has served on the Executive Committees of Performance Studies International and the International Society for Theatre Research.

Education

  • PhD, Theatre Studies, University of Warwick
  • BFA, Drama, University of Calgary

Series Editor

  • Critical Media Histories (Bloomsbury, with Peter W. Marx)
  • Cambridge Studies in Theatre and Performance Theory (Cambridge)
  • Transnational Theatre Histories (Palgrave, with Marlis Schweitzer and Leo Cabranes-Grant)

Books

  • 2028, Here Be Dragons, ed. with Erith Jaffe-Berg, and Peter Marx (Northwestern University Press)
  • 2027, George, Redux: Revisiting Sources to Find Performance (Bloomsbury)
  • 2027, Doing Critical Media History, co-authored with Peter W. Marx (Bloomsbury)
  • 2027, Heritage Repertoires and the Decolonizing Mandate, ed. with Caroline Gleason-Mercier and Keary Watts (Routledge)
  • 2024, The Cambridge Guide to Mixed Methods Research for Theatre and Performance Studies, co-edited with Paul Rae (Cambridge University Press).
  • 2023, Liberal Lives and Activist Repertoires: Political Performance and Victorian Social Reform (Cambridge University Press).
  • 2021, The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance Historiography (Routledge), co-edited with Peter W. Marx
  • 2018, Uncle Tom’s Cabins: The Transnational Histories of America’s Most Mutable Book, co-edited with Stefka Mihaylova (University of Michigan Press). Released in PB 2020.
  • 2017, A Cultural History of Theatre, 6 volumes, General Editor (with Christopher Balme) (Bloomsbury UK)
  • 2012, The Broadview Anthology of Nineteenth-Century British Performance, Editor (Broadview Press).
  • 2008, The Cambridge Companion to Performance Studies, Editor (Cambridge University Press).
  • 2007, Stages of Emergency: Cold War Nuclear Civil Defense (Duke University Press).
  • 2007, The Performing Society: Nineteenth-Century Theatre’s History, Volume 5 of “Redefining British Theatre History,” co-edited with Peter Holland (Palgrave Macmillan)
  • 2003, Theatricality, co-edited with Thomas Postlewait (Cambridge University Press).
  • 2000, The Economics of the British Stage, 1800–1914 (Cambridge University Press).
  • 1999, Playwriting and Nineteenth-Century British Women, co-edited with Ellen Donkin (Cambridge University Press).
  • 1994, George Bernard Shaw and the Socialist Theatre (Westport, CT: Praeger/ Greenwood).
  • 1991, Actresses as Working Women: Their Social Identity in Victorian Culture (London: Routledge).

Recent Publication Awards and Honors

  • 2025 Joanne Tompkins Prize for Excellence in Editing, ADSA
  • 2025 Edited Works Award, ATHE
  • 2025 Edited Collection Prize Special Mention, TaPRA
  • 2024 Honorable Mention, Barnard Hewitt Award, ASTR
  • 2024 Shortlisted for Outstanding Book Award, ATHE
  • 2023 Annibel Jenkins Prize in Performance and Theatre Studies

Recent Grants

  • 2024–27 (Co-PI with Suzan Van Der Lee) National Science Foundation, Geoscience workforce development through training inclusive geoscience leaders for a diverse talent pool, (Cancelled by Trump administration)
  • 2023–24 (PI) Sawyer Seminar, Mellon Foundation, “On Decolonizing Theatre”
  • 2020–22 (Co-PI with Suzan Van Der Lee) National Science Foundation, GEOPATHS pilot grant
  • 2020–2 Buffett Virtual Global Campus Collaborative Initiative Grant
  • 2020–2 Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities Faculty Fellow
  • 2018 (Lead applicant) Wenner Gren Foundation Workshop Grant
  • 2018 (Co-applicant) Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung Kolleg
  • 2016–18 Alexander von Humboldt Research Award, Köln Univerität

Research and Advisory Boards (selected)

  • Contributing Editor, TDR: The Drama Review
  • Honorary Advisory Editor, New Theatre Quarterly
  • Social Science Research Council, University Advisory Committee, Dissertation Proposal Development
  • Advisory Board, Shanghai Theatre Academy
  • Advisory Board, Gate Theatre Research Network
  • Editorial Board, New Mermaids (Bloomsbury)
  • Advisory Board, Adam Matthews “Nineteenth-Century Stage” digital collection
  • "Theatre & Gentrification" PI Emine Fisek Türem, European Research Council Grant (Austrian Academy of Sciences)