My principal areas of interest are audience and performance studies, and I have published on audience ethnography and the performance of grief in contemporary society. Recently I have been working on Irish Theatre and grief in early twentieth century Ireland and working class performance culture in County Louth from Home Rule to the Free State. In 2017 I published ‘Playing the Rebel: Propaganda and Amateur Dramatics in County Louth, 1902-1916’ in Donal Hall and Martin Maguire’s County Louth and the Irish Revolution (Irish Academic Press, 2017). I have subsequently produced a number of conference papers and public talks on this time period in County Louth, and I am working towards a forthcoming monograph, Dundalk in Revolution: Cultural Life in Dundalk 1898-1923. In 2019 and 2020 I was invited to give two public lectures on my work as part of Louth Festival of History/Decade of Centenaries programme. In 2022 I published a chapter, ‘Speaking from Beyond the Grave: The Voices of the Dead in Contemporary Irish Drama’, in a monograph from Cambridge Scholars, The Graveyard in Literature: Liminality and Social Critique.
I am a former member of the executive committee of the Irish Society for Theatre Research, and convener of the ISTR New Scholar’s Prize 2012 and 2013. I am currently convener of the Annual Dorothy Macardle Humanities Lecture at DkIT.
Book Chapters |
2024, Forthcoming: 'Anti-fascism and the Gothic in the work of Dorothy Macardle (1935-1953); The International Dimension: Irish Literature and the Arts of the 1930s, Edited by Germán Asensio, Madalina Armie and Veronica Membrive, Universidad de Almeria
2023: ‘Twentieth Century Literature and Drama in Co. Louth’; Louth: history and society. Interdisciplinary essays on the history of an Irish county, Geography Publications
2022, ‘Speaking from Beyond the Grave: The Voices of the Dead in Contemporary Irish Drama’; The Graveyard in Literature: Liminality and Social Critique, Cambridge Scholars.
2017, ‘‘Playing the Rebel’: Propaganda and Amateur Dramatics in County Louth, 1902–1916’; County Louth and the Irish Revolution, 1912-1923, edited by Martin Maguire and Donal Hall, Irish Academic Press.
2012, ‘The Performance of Grief in Contemporary Ireland’; Changes in Contemporary Ireland, edited by Catherine Rees, Loughborough University Press.
2010, ‘Decoding the Audience: Chatroom September 2008’; Staging Thought: Essays on Irish Theatre, Practice and Scholarship, Pater Lang. Edited by Rhona Trench and Christabel Scaife.
Periodicals
2019, ‘Recovering Irish Writing on the Margins’, Review A History of Working Class Writing; Saothar, Journal of the Irish Labour History Society.
2010, ‘Decoding the Audience: The real Audience and their creation of meaning’; About Performance, ‘Audiencing: The Work of the Spectator in Live Performance’, ed. By Gay McAuley, Department of Performance, University of Sydney.
Public Lectures
September, 2020, ‘Movies, Musicals and Plays in Dundalk 1919-1923’ ; Invited Public Audio Lecture, Louth Festival of History, Co. Louth
November 2019, ‘Theatre, Play and Culture in Dundalk 1900-1923’ ; Invited Public Lecture, County Louth Archaeological and Historical Society, Dundalk
September 2019, ‘Popular Culture and the Revolution in North County Louth, 1900-1923’ ; Invited Public Lecture, Drogheda Library, Louth Festival of History, Co. Louth
Conference Papers
May 2023, ‘Balancing Acts: The Ethics of Teaching Trauma, Criminality and Deviance in Contemporary Irish Theatre’, ISTR Annual Conference, UCG
May 2022, ‘The Dundalk Maytime Festival (1965-2006) – Citizenship as Performance’ ; ISTR Annual Conference, Magee, University of Ulster (Panel Chair)
April, 2022, ‘The Power of Silent - Liminality and Social Critique in Contemporary Irish Theatre’ ; Conference Paper, “Liminality and Social Critique’, Department of Humanities, DkIT
July, 2021, ‘Culture on the Border: Theatre and the Arts in Dundalk 1918-2020’ ; IASIL, International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures Conference, ‘Creative Borders’, University of Lodz, Poland (online) (Panel Chair)
May, 2021, ‘Reflections on an Online Year of Performance – the Simple, Mass and Socially Distanced Audience’; ISTR Annual Conference, ‘Hard Graft: Performance, Labour and Value’, Queen’s University Belfast (online)
April, 2021, ‘Reflections on an Online Year of Performance – the Simple, Mass and Socially Distanced Audience’ ; “Society and the Arts in the Pandemic”: Virtual Symposium, Department of Humanities, DkIT (online) (Panel Chair Roundtable discussion with theatre practitioners)
July 2019, ‘A Hidden History: Working Class Culture in Dundalk 1898-1905’ ; IASIL, International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures Conference, Trinity College, Dublin
May 2019, ‘Negotiating Representations of Toxic Masculinity on the Abbey stage in 2018’ ; Irish Society for Theatre Research, ISTR Annual Conference, Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick
April 2019, ‘Negotiating Representations of Toxic Masculinity on the Abbey stage in 2018’ ; Masculinities Seminar, DkIT
2018 ‘Louth in Revolution: Regional Impressions of the Irish Revival 1902-1923’ ; Irish Society for Theatre Research, ISTR Annual Conference, University of Lincoln
Fiona.Fearon@dkit.ie
South Building (E141)
0429370200
(2811)
