Biography
I joined Trinity in 2019, having previously taught at UCD, Central School of Speech and Drama, the University of Greenwich, King's College London, Shakespeare's Globe, and Oxford University. In 2017 I was a post-doctoral fellow at Shakespeare's Globe on the Read Not Dead rehearsed readings project. At Trinity I teach on a range of modules, from first-year survey courses to sophister special topics, and offer doctoral supervision.
I am the Director of Undergraduate Teaching and Learning for the School of Creative Arts, Visiting Student Co-ordinator for the Department of Drama, and the School Champion for the Trinity Inclusive Curriculum Project. I am also the Director of the MPhil in Theatre and Performance, and have previously co-chaired the Trinity Staff LGBTQ Network. My responsibilities outside Trinity include being a Trustee of the British Shakespeare Association and being a peer reviewer for a number of leading journals and publishers. From time to time I write reviews for the Times Literary Supplement and contribute to podcasts such as Not Just The Tudors and That Shakespeare Life. I have also contributed programme notes for productions at Shakespeare''s Globe, and written numerous pieces for the Globe magazine. I have been a member of the Advisory Board for Hedgepig Theatre''s 'Expand The Canon' project, and contributed my services as a mentor for the Early Modern Scholars of Colour Network (EMSOC).
In terms of my research, I work in, among, and between the fields of Performance Studies, Shakespeare and Early Modern Studies, and theatrical and cultural histories. I have particular interests in gender, embodiment, and accessibility. My first monograph, published in 2020 with Arden Bloomsbury, is entitled Shakespeare's Body Language: Shaming Gestures and Gender Politics on the Renaissance Stage. This book explores gestures such as spitting, thumb-biting, hand-washing, and stillness as a way of interrogating gender norms in the age of Shakespeare, and considers non-verbal communication both as reactionary outbursts of conservatism as well as acts of resistance. Work of mine has also been published in Early Modern Literary Studies, The Palgrave Handbook of Shakespeare's Queens, How and Why We Teach Shakespeare, Playfulness in Shakespearean Adaptations, and The Palgrave Handbook of Theatre and Migration.
I edited The Tempest for Arden Performance Editions (2021), and am a Contributing Editor to the New Oxford Shakespeare (my critical edition of the quarto text of The Merry Wives of Windsor will appear in the New Oxford Shakespeare: Complete Alternative Versions, eds. Gary Taylor, Terri Bourus, and Gabriel Egan). From 2022 -- 2024 I am writing the annual review of books on Shakespeare in performance for Shakespeare Survey. I co-edited (with Gabriel Egan) a Special Issue of Shakespeare journal on 'The Shakespeare First Folio, 1623 - 2023' (2024). A collection of essays, entitled An Alternative History of Shakespearean Acting: Contexts, Practices, and Cultural Authority is forthcoming from Arden Bloomsbury (co-edited with Sally Barnden and Emer McHugh).
Current research interests include work on the politics, hermeneutics, and implications of casting practices in Shakespearean productions; representations of Caliban in performance; and the history of stock-characters and type-casting.
Publications and Further Research Outputs
Peer-Reviewed Publications
Miranda Fay Thomas, `Shameful Shakespeare: Gesture as Embodied Metaphor", Inkwell: Medieval and Renaissance Symposium, University College Cork, March 2023, 2023
The Stranger's Case: Exile in (and out of) Shakespeare in, editor(s)Yana Meerzon and S. E. Wilmer , The Palgrave Handbook of Theatre and Migration, Palgrave, 2023, [Miranda Fay Thomas]
Miranda Fay Thomas, `Camp Shakespeare: Beyond Queer Representation in Contemporary Performance", Pride in Research conference, Trinity College Dublin, June 2022, 2022
Miranda Fay Thomas, `We are family? Queer Inclusion/Ostracization in Twelfth Night", Irish Renaissance Seminar, online, UCC, Summer 2022, 2022
Miranda Fay Thomas, Time and Gender on the Shakespearean Stage, by Sarah Lewis, Review of Time and Gender on the Shakespearean Stage, by Sarah Lewis, by Sarah Lewis , Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2022
Miranda Fay Thomas, The Tempest, Arden Bloomsbury, 2021
Miranda Fay Thomas, Error in Shakespeare: Shakespeare in Error, by Alice Leonard, Review of Error in Shakespeare: Shakespeare in Error, by Alice Leonard, by Alice Leonard , Shakespeare Quarterly, 2021
Miranda Fay Thomas, Re-defining the Shakespearean Actor: Casting and Diversity at Shakespeare's Globe under Emma Rice and Michelle Terry, Société Français Shakespeare, 39, 2021
'Covering the main points': Playing with The Tempest in Margaret Atwood's Hag-Seed' in, editor(s)Aidan Norrie and Marina Gerzic , Playfulness in Shakespearean Adaptations, Routledge, 2020, pp39 - 55, [Miranda Fay Thomas]
Miranda Fay Thomas, Shakespeare's Body Language: Shaming Gestures and Gender Politics on the Renaissance Stage, London, Arden Bloomsbury, 2019
'"And so everyone according to his cue": Practice-led Teaching and Cue Scripts in the Classroom' in, editor(s)Sidney R. Homan , How and Why We Teach Shakespeare , Routledge, 2019, pp128 - 137, [Miranda Fay Thomas]
'"Tremble at patience": Constant Queens and Female Solidarity in The Two Noble Kinsmen and The Winter's Tale' in, editor(s)Kavita Mudan Finn and Valerie Schutte , The Palgrave Handbook of Shakespeare's Queens , Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp87 - 103, [Miranda Fay Thomas]
Miranda Fay Thomas, Review: The Hand on the Shakespearean Stage: Gesture, Touch, and the Spectacle of Dismemberment, by Farah Karim-Cooper (Bloomsbury: Arden Shakespeare, 2016), Early Theatre, 20.1, 2017, p185-188
Miranda Fay Thomas, Review: Shakespeare's Storms, by Gwilym Jones (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014), Symbolism, 17, 2017, p281-285
Miranda Fay Thomas, Review: Shakespeare and Gesture in Practice, by Darren Tunstall (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), Shakespeare Bulletin, (35.4), 2017, p731-735
Miranda Fay Thomas, Political acts and political acting: Roman gesture and Julius Caesar, Early Modern Literary Studies, Special Issue 25, 2016, p1 - 24
Miranda Fay Thomas, Review: Dido, Queen of Carthage (Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Shakespeare's Globe, London), Shakespeare Bulletin, 33.3, 2015, p531-534
Miranda Fay Thomas, 'The "fear of being found out": crises of confidence among first year undergraduates and first time teachers.' , HERN-J: The Higher Education Research Network Journal, 10, 2015, p72 - 81
Research Expertise
Description
My research focuses on the plays of Shakespeare, both in their original moment of performance and publication, and in their afterlives and legacy. My primary focus is on embodiment. My first monograph, Shakespeare"s Body Language, studies Shakespeare"s use of shaming gestures as a way of interrogating gender norms in Elizabethan and Jacobean society. More recently, my work on embodiment has extended to thinking about casting practices in productions of Shakespeare"s plays. In this, I am particularly interested in the cognitive affects of casting on audience expectation and memory, and I explore this through the intersectional lenses of race, gender, and class. This work currently manifests itself as an edited collection " The Idea of the Shakespearean Actor " and I have also published an article on the notion of how diverse casting has been used at Shakespeare"s Globe under the artistic directorships of Emma Rice and Michelle Terry. This work overlaps with my second key interest, which is Shakespeare in performance. I have been invited to propose a monograph for Arden Bloomsbury"s Shakespeare in the Theatre series, and have received an award from the FAHSS Benefactions fund to visit the archives of Shakespeare"s Globe this summer to complete this: the book will be the first history of the Globe"s first female artistic directors and how their approaches to diversity and inclusion have been received in the context of the so-called culture wars. My third interest is in editing and the dissemination of Shakespeare in textual form. I am the editor of The Tempest (2021, Arden Performance Editions), and am editing The Merry Wives of Windsor for the New Oxford Shakespeare: Complete Alternative Versions (OUP, 2025) and co-editing a special issue of Shakespeare journal on the First Folio"s first 400 years. I also work on adaptation, and in particular, novelizations of Shakespeare"s plays.Recognition
Representations
Peer reviewer, Shakespeare journal
External Examiner, University of Huddersfield
Peer Reviewer, Arden Bloomsbury
Peer reviewer, Peter Lang publishing
Peer reviewer, Adaptation journal
Memberships
Higher Education Academy (Fellow)
British Shakespeare Association (Trustee)
Shakespeare Association of America (member)
European Shakespeare Research Association (member)
Société Française Shakespeare (member)
Society for Renaissance Studies (member)
Renaissance Society of America (member)