Staff profile

Director of Undergraduate Studies

Office Hour: Online (via Zoom) on Wednesdays from 10am to 11 am. To make alternative arrangements, please send me an email.

 

I specialise in theatre and performance from the late seventeenth century until the mid-nineteenth century, with a focus on archival histories and how theatre – understood as a practice, industry and institution – engages with wider social, political, and cultural issues. I am especially interested in representations of race and gender, as well as Romantic-period print culture more broadly.

My first book, Staging the Peninsular War: English Theatres 1807-1815 (Ashgate/Routledge, 2015/2016) draws upon a range of visual, printed and manuscript sources in order to examine the larger political and ideological axes of Romantic-period performance. It explores how, during the seven vexed years that marked the Peninsular War, the English theatres helped ascribe new urgency to issues such as citizenship, patriotism, and the articulation of national identities. It also provides the first printed ‘Calendar of Plays for Covent Garden, Drury Lane and Bristol Theatre Royal, 1807–1815’.

'What do we gain from watching a familiar play for the nth time?' is the question that animates my second book, Stock Pieces: British Repertory Theatre, 1760–1830 (Liverpool University Press, 2024). To deliver varied programmes, Romantic-period theatre managers relied on a repertoire of ‘stock’ entertainments performed in alternation with the latest new plays. Repertory theatre was not new to the Romantic period, but it took on additional purchase at a time when the playhouse was not simply a site for entertainment but a government-controlled cultural institution and business, subject to sometimes extreme financial, political, and ideological pressures. Through a selection of lively case studies, Stock Pieces offers the first in-depth investigation of how ‘stock’ status was acquired, its box office significance, and more extensive influence beyond the playhouse, including in the service of the abolitionist cause. 

Articles of mine have focused on Peninsular War poetry and novels; Romantic-period wartime and post-war theatre; women’s writing; satirical prints; and Anglo-Caribbean exchanges (as listed below, under ‘Publications’).

I am a Board Member and the Book Review Editor for Studies in Romanticism – the flagship journal in the field. 

Before joining the English Studies Department at Durham in 2018, I studied at the Universities of Oxford (MA; DPhil) and York (MA). I then taught for various colleges at the University of Oxford, was a Junior Research Fellow at Worcester College (University of Oxford, 2012–2016) ,and a Departmental and College Lecturer in English at St Hugh’s College (University of Oxford, 2016–18).

 Engagement and Impact:

In 2016, I was one of the principal curators for the Bodleian Library’s successful autumn exhibition, Staging History 1780–1840. This exhibition explored how and why in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries ‘history’ became a dominant genre in Britain’s theatrical and musical repertoires. The exhibition generated a number of public outreach initiatives, including an introductory video (available via YouTube), media interviews and reviews, gallery tours, and a podcast series (available via iTunes). 

I've given public talks on my research and enjoy liaising with arts and theatre specialists to close the loop between work undertaken in and beyond the classroom. 

Teaching at Undergraduate Level:

At Durham, I convene 'Romantic Plays and Players' (a Level 2 Seminar Module) and 'Black Lives, pre-1900' (a Level 3 Special Topic Module). I also lecture for various other modules, and supervise dissertations (at undergraduate, MA, and PhD levels).

PhD Supervision:

Durham offers fantastic resources for research into the literature of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. I warmly welcome inquiries from potential postgraduate research students working on any aspect of English literature from 1660 to 1840, and especially where your own interests touch upon Romantic-period drama, theatre and performance; writing of the Romantic period in relation to its historical contexts; slavery and abolition; private lives (diaries, letters); book history; and the intersection of literature and visual cultures. At Durham, we work as supervisory teams. I have had the pleasure to co-supervise the doctoral research of:

• Sheng (Ariel) Yao (Full-time PhD student, Chinese Government Scholarship, 2019 – Examined 2024): ‘“A Motion and a Spirit”: William Wordsworth’s, Joanna Baillie’s and Robert Browning’s Dramatic Poetics of Feeling and Passion’.
• Francesco Marchioni (Full-time PhD student, 2019– Examined January 2023)): ‘Promethean Forms of Grief in the Work of Byron, Shelley and Leopardi’.

I am currently co-supervisor to the following PhD students:

• Hao Yang Zhang (Full-time PhD student, January 2024–): '"This is no Age for Marriage": Marital Politics in English Dramatic Comedies, 1660–1737'.  
• Toby Lucas (Full-time PhD student, 2022 –): '"The life of Napoleon is the epic of our century’: Reconfigurations of Napoleon in Second-Generation Romantic Poetry.'
• Ayesha Susan Gaye (Full-time PhD student, April 2023 –): '"To be free is very sweet": A Critical Approach to Race Representation in British Literature 1830–1880' (20% supervisory role taken in October 2024, providing cover for a colleague on leave)  
• Keerthi Vasishta (Full-time PhD student, 2021–2024): ‘Conceiving Liberty: William Wordsworth's Poetry and Prose, 1789–1845.’

Please feel free to send me an email if you are thinking of applying to Durham and would like to discuss doctoral research plans that fall within my areas of specialisation. 

I have also helped mentor colleagues applying for Leverhulme Early Career Fellowships and would be pleased to hear from you with enquiries related to any of the research interests listed above.

• English literature 1660–1840, with a special focus on:
• theatre and performance
• political histories
• representations of race
• the early Caribbean 
• slavery and abolition
• gender
• autobiographies
• Romantic-period print cultures

• 2024: Short-Term Fellowship, Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington D.C.:
• 2024: Short-Term Fellowship, John Carter Brown Library, Brown University :
• 2023: Recipient of Durham University’s Exceptional Contribution Award : Award ‘for making a sustained contribution over and above the normal expectations of your role’
• 2023: Administrative Roles: Director of Undergraduate Studies Faculty Education Committee (Member) Department Education Committee (Chair) Department Undergraduate Student Staff Consultative Committee (Member) Department Management Group (Member) Department Progression Committee (Member)
• 2022: Recipient of Durham University’s Discretionary Award Scheme: Award ‘for making a contribution over and above the normal expectations of your role’
• 2021: Keynote Address: The London Stage and the Nineteenth-Century World III Conference, University of Oxford, April 2021.
• 2019: Keynote Address: Humour and Satire in British Romanticism Conference, Durham University, September 2019.
• 2017: Frederick A. and Marion S. Pottle Short Term Fellowship, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library:
• 2016: W. Jackson Bate/Douglas W. Bryant Fellow at Houghton Library, Harvard College Library:
• 2016: Short-term Fellowship, Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington D.C.:
• 2016: Co-Curator for the Bodleian Library exhibition ' Staging History, 1780–1840', University of Oxford.: Public engagements included: an interview for a local TV station, gallery tours and podcast recordings. The podcast is freely available online via iTunes: >
• 2012: Junior (Postdoctoral) Research Fellowship, Worcester College, University of Oxford :

Authored book

• Valladares, S. (2024). Stock Pieces: British Repertory Theatre, 1760–1830. Liverpool University Press
• Valladares, S. (2015). Staging the Peninsular War: English Theatres 1807–1815. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315610542

Book review

• Valladares, S. (online). R. Cole Heinowitz, Spanish America and British Romanticism 1777–1826
• Valladares, S. (2019). Jonathan Mulrooney. Romanticism and Theatrical Experience: Kean, Hazlitt, and Keats in the Age of Theatrical News. The Review of English Studies, 71(300), 587-589. https://doi.org/10.1093/res/hgz138
• Valladares, S. (2018). David Worrall, Celebrity, Performance, Reception: British Georgian Theatre as Social Assemblage
• Valladares, S. (2018). William D. Brewer, Staging Romantic Chameleons and Imposters. Romanticism, 24(3), https://doi.org/10.3366/rom.2018.0389
• Valladares, S. (2016). Frederick Burwick, British Drama of the Industrial Revolution. The Review of English Studies, 67(282), https://doi.org/10.1093/res/hgw053
• Valladares, S. (2015). Julia Swindells and David Francis Taylor (eds), The Oxford Handbook of The Georgian Theatre 1737-1832. The Review of English Studies, 66(274), https://doi.org/10.1093/res/hgu083
• Valladares, S. (2014). Fiona Ritchie and Peter Sabor (eds), Shakespeare in the Eighteenth Century
• Valladares, S. (2014). David Francis Taylor, Theatres of Opposition: Empire, Revolution & Richard Brinsley Sheridan
• Valladares, S. (2011). L. Crisafulli and K. Elam (eds.), Women’s Romantic Theatre and Drama: History, Agency, and Performativity

Chapter in book

• Valladares, S. (2020). Spanish Politicking in British Periodical Reviews, 1808-1814. In Y. Rodríguez Pérez (Ed.), Literary hispanophobia and hispanophilia in Britain and the Low Countries (1550-1850) (213-234). Amsterdam University Press. https://doi.org/10.26530/oapen_1006718
• Valladares, S. (2018). British Women Writers of Peninsular Fiction. In I. Haywood, & D. Saglia (Eds.), Spain and British Romanticism, 1800-1840 (195-213). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64456-1_11
• Valladares, S. (2018). ‘“All the world’s a stage & all the men are merely players”: Theatre-going in London during the Hundred Days’. In K. Astbury, & M. Philp (Eds.), Napoleon’s 100 Days and the Struggle for Legitimacy (185-208). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70208-7_10
• Valladares, S. (2018). ‘The Changing Theatrical Economy: Charles Dibdin the Younger at Sadler’s Wells, 1814–19’. In O. Cox Jensen, D. Kennerley, & I. Newman (Eds.), Charles Dibdin and Late Georgian Culture (171-188). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198812425.003.0012
• Valladares, S. (2016). ‘Empire, Revolution and Patriotism in Thomas Morton’s Columbus; Or, A World Discovered (1792)’. In M. Burden, W. Heller, J. Hicks, & E. Lockhart (Eds.), Staging History, 1780–1840. Bodleian Library Publishing
• Valladares, S. (2010). ‘“He that can bring the dead to life again”: Resurrecting the Spanish setting of Coleridge’s Osorio (1797) and Remorse (1813)’. In J. M. Almeida (Ed.), Romanticism and the Anglo-Hispanic Imaginary (133-156). Brill Rodopi

Journal Article

• Valladares, S. (online). ‘Romantic Englishwomen and “the Theatre of Glory”: The Role of the Peninsular War in Forging British National Identity’
• Valladares, S. (2022). "Act[ing] Riotously": Theatre and Performance in Early Nineteenth-Century Jamaica. The Review of English Studies, 73(309), 321-343. https://doi.org/10.1093/res/hgab040
• Valladares, S. (2019). Afro-Creole Revelry and Rebellion on the British Stage: Jonkanoo in Obi; or, Three-Fingered Jack (1800). The Review of English Studies, 70(294), 291-311. https://doi.org/10.1093/res/hgy093
• Valladares, S. (2013). ‘Teaching Guide to Anne Lister and the Ladies of Llangollen’. Literature Compass, 10(11), 869-870. https://doi.org/10.1111/lic3.12110
• Valladares, S. (2013). ‘“For the sake of illustrating principles”: Wordsworth, the Convention of Cintra, and Satirical Prints’. European Romantic Review, 24(5), 31-54. https://doi.org/10.1080/10509585.2013.828400
• Valladares, S. (2013). ‘“An Introduction to the Literary Person[s]” of Anne Lister and the Ladies of Llangollen’. Literature Compass, 10(4), 353-368. https://doi.org/10.1111/lic3.12054
• Valladares, S. (2012). ‘Walter Scott’s Vision of Don Roderick (1811): “A Drum and Trumpet Performance”?’

Other (Digital/Visual Media)

• Valladares, S., & Burden, M. (online). Staging History: A Curator’s Introduction
• Valladares, S. (2018). Resisting Slavery
• Valladares, S., Burden, M., & Kennerley, D. (2016). Staging History, 1780 to 1840, Oxford University Podcasts (4 episodes)
• Valladares, S. (. (2016). 'Staging History in Regency-Era Britain’, That’s TV South Midlands
• Valladares, S. (2015). ‘Waterloo’s bicentenary and the Napoleonic Wars in Portugal and Spain – a guest post from Susan Valladares’
• Valladares, S. (2015). ‘A Tyrant at Covent Garden: 6 April 1815’, 100 Days in 100 Objects online exhibition
• Valladares, S. (2015). ‘Five Questions: Susan Valladares on Staging the Peninsular War’
• Valladares, S. (2015). ‘A Tyrant at Covent Garden: 6 April 1815.’