Jean Graham-Jones

Graham-Jones-photo-1_Jean-Graham-jones

Research Interests

  • Contemporary and Colonial Latin American (especially Argentine) Theatre and Performance
  • Theatre of the Spanish Golden Age
  • Theatre, Performance, Literary, Critical, and Cultural Theories
  • Theories of Globalization and Coloniality
  • Translation Theories and Practice

Education

  • Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages and Literatures, University of California, Los Angeles

Jean Graham-Jones is the Lucille Lortel Professor of Theatre in the Theatre and Performance Studies Program and in the Latin American, Iberian and Latino Cultures Program.

Professor Graham-Jones is the author of fifty articles and book chapters, and her book-length publications include: Exorcising History: Argentine Theater under Dictatorship (2000, Spanish translation 2018), Reason Obscured: Nine Plays by Ricardo Monti (ed. and trans., 2004), BAiT: Buenos Aires in Translation (ed. and trans., 2008), Timbre 4: Two Plays by Claudio Tolcachir (ed. and trans., 2010), and Evita, Inevitably: Performing Argentina’s Female Icons Before and After Eva Perón (2014).

In 2019 she published Lola Arias: Re-enacting Life, an edited volume of performance scripts, interviews, and other texts on the work of Buenos Aires theatre artist Lola Arias, and she is currently writing a monographic study of the challenges in contemporary performance translation, based on her experiences as a scholar, translator, director, and actor. She is a former editor of Theatre Journal and and serves on the editorial boards of nine journals and book series. From 2015 to 2019, she was the elected President of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Professor Graham-Jones was most recently seen performing in the world premiere of Terry Galloway’s The Ugly Girl at the 2014 Disability and Deaf Arts (DADA) Festival in Liverpool.

Awards and Grants

Selected: Honorable Mention, Association for Theatre in Higher Education's Excellence in Editing Award (2020), Distinguished Alumna, UCLA Department of Spanish and Portuguese (2019), Fellow, International Research Center: Interweaving Performance Cultures (Freie Universitaet 2011-16), Translation Publication Grant, PROSUR, Argentine Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2010)

Professional Affiliations and Memberships

Association for Theatre in Higher Education, American Society for Theatre Research, International Federation for Theatre Research, Latin American Studies Association

Courses Taught

Contemporary Latin American Theatre, 1960-present, Performance and the Latin American City, Transatlantic Theatre and Performance: Golden Age Spain and Pre-Conquest/Early Colonial Latin America, The Borders of Latinx American Theatre and Performance, History of Theatrical Theory, Advanced Theatre Research

Publications

  • Graham-Jones, Jean. 2021. “Translation and/as Theatre and Performance Historiography: Towards a Reconsideration of a Neglected but Omnipresent Challenge,” in The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance Historiography, eds. Tracy Davis and Peter Marx. New York: Routledge.
  • Graham-Jones, Jean. 2021. “Autogestión, horizontalidad y ‘riesgos baratísimos’: El Pampero Cine y el teatro independiente,” in Entre/telones y pantallas: Afectos y saberes en la performance argentina contemporánea, eds. Jordana Blejmar, Philippa Page, and Cecilia Sosa. Buenos Aires: Libraria, 2021.

  • Graham-Jones, Jean. 2021. “Re-enacting life: postfazione,” in Stratagemmi 41 (2021). Trans. Corrado Rovida and Giulia Troncatti.

  • Graham-Jones, Jean. 2020 “International Festivals in Latin America: Festival Santiago a Mil and Festival Internacional de Buenos Aires,” in The Cambridge Companion to International Theatre Festivals, ed. Ric Knowles, Cambridge: CUP.
  • Graham-Jones, Jean. 2020. “The Translational Politics of Surtitling: Lola Arias’s Campo minado / Minefield,” in Theatrical Speech Acts: Performing Language, eds. Erika Fischer-Lichte, Torsten Jost, and Sascha Iris Jain. New York: Routledge.
  • Graham-Jones, Jean. 2019. “Assembly as community: politics and performance in late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century Buenos Aires,” in The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Politics, eds. Helena Grehan and Peter Eckersall, New York / London: Routledge
  • Graham-Jones, Jean. 2018. “Cozarinsky y su médico: ‘Hay algo en la ficción que con el tiempo se vuelve documental,’” in Biodrama, Proyecto Archivos: Seis documentales escénicos, by Vivi Tellas, eds. Pamela Brownell and Paola Hernández. Buenos Aires/Córdoba, Argentina: Papeles Teatrales (Instituto Nacional de Teatro).
  • Graham-Jones, Jean. 2018. “Buenos Aires Artists and Contemporary Transnational Performance Networks: Lola Arias Transports the Real,” in Theatre and Cartographies of Power: Repositioning the Latina/o Americas, eds. Analola Santana and Jimmy Noriega. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
  • Graham-Jones, Jean. 2017. “La representación de la otredad en la escena actual porteña: hacia una gestualidad teatral ‘decolonial,’” in Estudios teatrales: nuevas perspectivas y visiones comparadas, eds. Alba Saura Clares and Isabel Guerrero Llorente. Murcia, Spain: EDITUM (University of Murcia).
  • Graham-Jones, Jean. 2017. “The Critical and Cultural Faultlines of Translation/Adaptation in Contemporary Theatre,” in Staging and Adapting Translation, eds. Emma Cole and Geraldine Brodie. London: Routledge.
  • Graham-Jones, Jean. 2016. “The Coyote-Scholar in the Doctoral Theatre and Performance Studies Classroom: Reading Rabinal Achí, Güegüence, sor Juana, and Rascón Banda,” Latin American Theatre Review 50.1 (Fall 2016).
  • Graham-Jones, Jean. 2016. “Lola Arias Re-enacts the Real.” Commissioned 1,500-word program note for Brighton (England) International Theatre Festival.
  • Graham-Jones, Jean. 2016. “Buenos Aires’s Independent Theatre Scene,” in Theatre Journal 68 (May 2016).
  • Graham-Jones, Jean. 2015. English-language translation of Spam by Rafael Spregelburd. Theater 15.1 (Winter 2015).
  • Graham-Jones, Jean. 2015. “Apocalypse and Amnesia, or Adrift in Our Own Garbage: Rafael Spregelburd’s Spam,” Theater (Yale University) 45.1 (Winter 2015).
  • Graham-Jones, Jean. 2015. “Translation,” Contemporary Theatre Review, special issue “The Politics, Processes, and Practices of Editing.” 25.1 (2015).
  • Graham-Jones, Jean. 2015. 47 commissioned entries on Argentine and Uruguayan actors and actor-training. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Actors and Acting. Ed. Simon Williams. Cambridge: CUP.

Books