Meredith Conti
PhD
Director of Theatre BA
Assistant Professor
Affiliate, UB Gender Institute
Research Topics
Theatre and Performance Studies
Education
- PhD, Theatre Arts, University of Pittsburgh
- MA, Theatre Arts, University of Pittsburgh
- BFA, Theatre Performance, Denison University
Bio
Meredith Conti is an assistant professor of theatre at the University at Buffalo, SUNY and a historian of nineteenth-century theatre and culture in the United States and Britain. Her research variously explores the intersections of theatre and medicine; late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century popular entertainment forms (minstrelsy, world fairs, music hall, etc.); gender and race in the Victorian period; and gun violence in theatre. Her first book, Playing Sick: Performances of Illness in the Age of Victorian Medicine, was published in August 2018 by Routledge, and she currently co-editing an essay collection, Theatre and the Macabre, which will be published in 2021 as part of the University of Wales Press’s Horror Studies Series. Conti is also working on her second monograph entitled Gunpowder Plots: A Cultural History of Firearms and the U.S. American Theatre. This new book project is receiving support from fellowships and grants awarded by UB’s Gender Institute, UB’s Humanities Institute, the American Society for Theatre Research, the Harry Ransom Center, and the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. Conti’s scholarship has appeared in Theatre Journal, Journal of American Drama and Theatre, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Studies in Musical Theatre, and the edited collection Victorian Medicine and Popular Culture, among others. Conti serves as Book Review Editor for Theatre Annual and Co-Chair for Mid-America Theatre Conference’s Pitching Your Book and Articles-in-Progress workshops. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in theatre performance from Denison University and a certificate from the British and American Drama Academy, an acting conservatory in London, England. Her work in the theatre includes acting, directing, dramaturgy, and stage combat choreography.
Current Research
PUBLICATIONS
Books
2018 Playing Sick: Performances of Illness in the Age of Victorian Medicine. London: Routledge.
Edited Volumes
(2021) Theatre and the Macabre. Co-edited with Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr., Professor and Chair of Theatre Arts, Loyola Marymount University. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.
Monograph in Progress
Gunpowder Plots: A Cultural History of Firearms in the U.S. American Theatre
Journal Articles
2019 “Normalizing Disruption: Advocating for Reproductive Health in Academia.” Co-authored with Adanma Onyedike Barton, Kristi Good, and Ariel Nereson. Theatre Topics 29, no. 1 (March 2019), 59-70.
2018 “Look to the Crisis Actors.” Theatre Journal 70, no. 4 (December 2018), 439-441.
2018 “The Sound of Silence: A Viewer’s Guide to Emma González’s March for Our Lives Speech.” Theatre Journal 70, no. 4 (December 2018), E8-E11.
2018 “‘What if This Bullet is My Legacy?’: The Guns of Hamilton.” Studies in Musical Theatre 12, no. 2 (June 2018), 251-56.
Book Chapters
(2021) “Where He Fell: Macabre Tourism and the Immortal Death of Abraham Lincoln at Washington DC’s Ford’s Theatre.” In Theatre and the Macabre, Meredith Conti and Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr., editors.
2015 “Ungentlemanly Habits: The Dramaturgy of Drug Addiction in Fin-de-Siècle Theatrical Adaptations of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” In Victorian Medicine and Popular Culture, edited by Tabitha Sparks and Louise Penner (London: Routledge, 2015), 109-124. Peer-reviewed.
Book Reviews
2019 Review of Renata Kobetts Miller’s The Victorian Actress in the Novel and On the Stage. Journal of Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies 15, no. 3 (winter 2019). Ncgsjournal.com.
2019 Review of Sophie Chiari and Mickaël Popelard’s Spectacular Science, Technology, and Superstition in the Age of Shakespeare. British Society of Literature and Science, November 2019. Bsls.ac.uk.
2019 Review of Alex Mermikides and Gianna Bouchard’s Performance and the Medical Body in Theatre Journal 71, no. 2 (2019), 248-250.
RECENT FELLOWSHIPS AND AWARDS
2019-2020 Research Fellowship, Harry Ransom Center, Austin, TX
2019-2020 Residency Fellowship, Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Cody, WY
2019-2020 Humanities Institute Faculty Fellowship, University at Buffalo, SUNY
2019 Faculty Research Award, Gender Institute, University at Buffalo, SUNY
2018 Research Fellowship, American Society for Theatre Research
2018 Julian Park Publication Fund Award, College of Arts and Sciences, University at Buffalo, SUNY
2018 Nominee and finalist, National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend
2017 Brooks McNamara Publishing Subvention Award, American Society for Theatre Research