Diana Solomon
Areas of interest
My research focuses on 17th- and 18th-century literature, particularly theatre, gender, comedy, and print culture. I also work on issues concerning contemporary comedy. Currently I’m at work on two books: I’m finishing a book on “troubling comedy” on the Restoration and 18th-century English stage, and I’m beginning a biography of Restoration actress Anne Bracegirdle. My work has been supported by fellowships from the Clark, Folger, Huntington, and Noel Libraries and the Harry Ransom Center, and by grants from the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Education
- BA (Vassar)
- MA (Hawaii)
- PhD (UCSB)
Biography
I teach courses on 17th- and 18th-century literature, drama, comedy, and print culture; from time to time I also teach a role-playing games class using Reacting to the Past pedagogy. As the current Undergraduate/Associate Chair of the English department, I supervise the Honours program and teach ENGL 494, the Honours Research and Methods Seminar. In the Fall of 2024, in addition to ENGL 494, I’m also teaching a graduate class (ENGL 832) on troubling comedy in 18th-century English literature. In 2014, I received the SFU Excellence in Teaching Award.
Publications
Books
The Broadview Anthology of Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre
Edited by Diana Solomon and David Weston
Forthcoming 2024.
Interacting with Print: Elements of Reading in the Era of Print Saturation
Edited by the Multigraph Collective
Chicago, 2018.
Women and Comedy: History, Theory, Practice
Edited by Peter Dickinson, Anne Higgins, Diana Solomon, Paul St. Pierre, and Sean Zwagerman. Fairleigh Dickinson, 2013.
Prologues and Epilogues of Restoration Theater: Gender and Comedy, Performance and Print. Delaware, 2013.
Articles and Book Chapters
- “Out of the Closet and Into the Clasroom: Teaching Anne Finch’s Plays.” Aphra Behn Online, 14: 1 (Summer 2024): 1-13.
- “Sancho Panza in Eighteenth-Century English Theatre: Disrupting the Path of the Knight-Errant.” Eighteenth-Century Life, 46:3 (September 2022): 123-143.
- “Why have so few women won the Leacock prize for comedy?” (co-authored with Sean Zwagerman). The Conversation, 4 August 2022.
- “Little House on the Tundra: Female winners of the Leacock medal for Canadian literary comedy” (co-authored with Sean Zwagerman). English Studies in Canada, 47.1 (March 2021): 91-114.
- “Anecdotes and Restoration Actresses: The Cases of Elizabeth Barry and Anne Bracegirdle.” Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research. 31:2 (Winter 2016): 19-36.
- “The Jolt of Jacobean Tragicomedy: Double Falsehood on the Eighteenth-Century London Stage.” Revisiting Shakespeare's "Lost" Play: Cardenio/Double Falsehood in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Deborah C. Payne. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 57-73. (Winner of the 2018 Annibel Jenkins Prize in Performance and Theatre Studies)
- “Laugh, or Forever Hold your Peace: Comic crowd control in Margaret Cavendish’s dramatic prologues and epilogues.” Women and Comedy: History, Theory, Practice. Eds. Peter Dickinson, Anne Higgins, Diana Solomon, Paul St Pierre, Sean Zwagerman. Fairleigh Dickinson, 2013. 55-64.
- “George Lillo’s The London Merchant and the Laughing Audience.” The Laughing Stalk: Live Comedy and its Audiences. Ed. Judith Batalion. Anderson, SC: Parlor Press, 2012. 124-39.
- “Anne Finch, Restoration Playwright.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, 30:1 (2011): 37-56.
- “From Infamy to Intimacy: Anne Bracegirdle’s Mad Songs.” Restoration 35:1 (2011): 1-20.
- “Tragic Play, Bawdy Epilogue?” Prologues, Epilogues, Curtain-Raisers and Afterpieces: The Rest of the Eighteenth-Century London Stage. Ed. Judith Slagle and Daniel Ennis. Delaware, 2007. 155-78.
Forthcoming Publications
- Editor, The Provoked Wife, by John Vanbrugh. Forthcoming in The Broadview Anthology of Restoration and Early Eighteenth-Century Drama, 2 ed.
- “The Anecdotal Afterlife of Rebecca Marshall” (co-authored with Heather Ladd). Women’s Innovations in Theatre, Dance, and Performance series, Vol. 1: Performers. Ed. Colleen Daniher and Marlis Schweitzer. Bloomsbury.
- “Poetry on Stage.” The Oxford History of Poetry in English, ed. Patrick Cheney, Volume 5: Seventeenth-Century British Poetry, ed. Laura L. Knoppers. 108-120.
Current Graduate Student Supervision
PhD students:
- Sarah Cipes, UBC-Okanagan (committee member), Kelowna’s Comedy Communities: Technology, Embodiment and Gender in Perception of Contemporary Stand-Up Comedy Performances
- Nikhil Jayadevan (committee member), Comedy and Satire against Cynical Withdrawal
- Kate Moffatt (secondary field exam), Long eighteenth-century Literature, Textual Media, and Gender
Courses
Fall 2024
Future courses may be subject to change.