Research
Cove of Cork. Currier and Ives. Lithograph. Library of Congress.
As a theatre and cultural historian, I explore how theatre operates on local level in times of conflict and the ways communities use performance to claim power and create a sense of belonging. My work examines how theatre and performance functions in several ways: as strategies for practical and imaginative community building; cultural institutions that express group identity as well as reinforce dominant social and cultural expectations and prejudices; and methods of social and cultural resistance, adaptation, and survival. I examine these interactions in relation to individual and group identities, including racial, ethnic, gender, class, and religious identity, within local, national, and transnational contexts. In my research, performance is conceived not only as a cultural form that reflects, constitutes, and challenges identity, but also as an active construct that oppressed, disadvantaged, or displaced populations used to serve their own needs. Considering these populations as participants and creators instead of passive observers of theatrical culture and performance is crucial for reconsidering questions pertaining to identity, oppression, and social justice.
These relationships and concerns are explored in my publications. I have published peer-reviewed articles in Popular Entertainment Studies, Theatre Survey, Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film, Journal of American Drama and Theatre, Theatre Topics, and the New England Theatre Journal. I also have a chapter in Nineteenth Century Literature in Transition: Volume Two (May 2022). My reference articles have appeared in the Atlas of Boston History: The Making of a City and BlackPast.org. In 2014, I was awarded the American Theatre and Drama Society Vera Mowry Roberts Award for Research and Publication for my Theatre Survey (January 2014) article “The Mysterious Victory of the Newsboys: The Grand Duke Theatre’s 1874 Challenge to the Theatre Licensing Law.”
My book Irish on the Move: Performing Mobility in American Variety Theatre (University of Iowa Press, 2019) suggests that what I call “dramaturgies of mobility” -- repeated narratives, types, images, strategies, and performative practices -- participated in systems of meaning pertaining to mobility and informed systematic oppression as well as served as strategies for survival for migrant, ethnic, and racial groups. Focusing on the Irish in the United States, I argue that nineteenth-century variety theatre formed a crucial battleground for anxieties about mobility, immigration, and community. I won the 2013 Hibernian Research Award from the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame, 2014 American Theatre and Drama Society Faculty Travel Award, and 2016-2017 Harry Ransom Center Research Fellowship in the Humanities in support of the book project. Drawn from my book research, "Inventing the Tramp: The Early Tramp Comic on the Variety Stage,” won the 2018 Robert A. Schanke Theatre Research Award at the Mid-America Theatre Conference. Irish on the Move also was named a finalist for the Theatre Library Association’s 2020 George Freedley Memorial Award.
I am currently working on my second book, “The Fight for Desegregation: Race, Freedom, and the Theatre After the Civil War.” Analyzing a pivotal point in theatre history, “The Fight for Desegregation” presents a new history of desegregation, protest, and the theatre. In its exploration of the two decades after the Civil War, this book reimagines theatre’s role in the fight for civil rights as well as the way Reconstruction, civil rights activism, and the white backlash to these efforts shaped US theatre as an institution, a cultural site, and political space. The project traces two intertwined narratives: the emergence and decline of a national, decentralized effort by Black Americans that worked to desegregate US theatres, and how white theatre managers, artists, and audiences fought to reinforce and maintain a theatre institution with its foundation in white supremacy and ultimately succeeded. I received a 2026-7 ACLS Fellowship, 2024 American Philosophical Society Franklin Research Grant, and 2022 American Society for Theatre Research Research Fellowship in support of the project
Other in-progress projects include a monograph examining the relationship between transatlantic Irish popular performance and the emergence of modern urban sectarian violence in nineteenth- century Belfast. The project suggests a rethinking of patterns of cultural exchange through transatlantic cultural circulation and offers a model for theatre’s flexibility and response to crises. Granshaw was delighted to share her research for this project in a recent Theatre Survey article (January 2020).