Penny Farfan

Penelope Farfan

PhD, MA, BFA

Positions

Professor, Drama

Faculty of Arts, School of Creative and Performing Arts

Contact information

Email

farfan@ucalgary.ca

Phone number

Office: +1 (403) 220-6680

Background

Educational Background

Interdisciplinary PhD in Theatre and Drama, Northwestern University, 1994

MA English, McGill University, 1989

BFA Theatre, with Distinction, Concordia University, 1982

Biography

Penny Farfan (PhD Northwestern University; MA McGill University; BFA Concordia University) is Professor of Drama, specializing in dramatic literature, theatre history, interdisciplinary modernist studies, and feminist and queer theatre/drama/performance studies. She is the author of Performing Queer Modernism (Oxford University Press, 2017) and Women, Modernism, and Performance (Cambridge University Press, 2004, 2007), and the editor (with Lesley Ferris) of Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Plays by Women: The Early Twenty-First Century (University of Michigan Press, 2021) and Contemporary Women Playwrights: Into the Twenty-First Century (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). She is also a past editor of Theatre Journal. She has published many articles and book chapters on modern and contemporary theatre, drama, and performance, and held research fellowships and grants from the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Calgary Institute for the Humanities, the Killam Trust, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the University of Calgary International Grants Committee. Her work has been recognized with the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) Outstanding Article Award, the ATHE Excellence in Editing Award for sustained career achievement, and the Women and Theatre Program Achievement Award for Scholarship, as well as a University of Calgary University Professorship and a Faculty of Graduate Studies Great Supervisor Award. In addition to teaching graduate and undergraduate courses in modern and contemporary drama and theatre history, she has supervised graduate student research in the areas of modern and contemporary drama, theatre history, and feminist theatre, drama, and performance. She is the past Director of the Centre for Research in the Fine Arts and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

Courses

Course number Course title Semester
DRAM 483 Advanced Topics in Theatre Studies: Contemporary Women Playwrights Fall 2022
DRAM 483 Advanced Topics in Theatre Studies: Gender, Sexuality, Modernism, and Performance Winter 2023
DRAM 649 Studies in Modern Drama II Winter 2023

Awards

  • Fellow, Royal Society of Canada, 2022.
  • Achievement Award for Scholarship, Women and Theatre Program, Association for Theatre in Higher Education, 2015.
  • Excellence in Editing Award for Sustained Career Achivement, Assocation for Theatre in Higher Education, 2015.
  • Great Supervisor Award, Faculty of Graduate Studies, University of Calgary, 2015.
  • University Professorship, Universtiy of Calgary, 2005-2010.
  • Outstanding Article Award, Association for Theatre in Higher Education, 1997.

Publications

  • Performing Queer Modernism. Penny Farfan. Oxford University Press. (2017)
  • Women, Modernism, and Performance. Penny Farfan. Cambridge University Press. (2004)
  • Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Plays by Women: The Early Twenty-First Century. Penny Farfan and Lesley Ferris, editors. University of Michigan Press. (2021)
  • Contemporary Women Playwrights: Into the Twenty-First Century. Penny Farfan and Lesley Ferris, editors. Palgrave Macmillan. (2013)
  • "Sexuality". Penny Farfan. The Cambridge Companion to Modernist Theatre, edited by Brad Kent and David Kornhaber, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.
  • "Postcards and Popular Entertainment Studies: Resources and Methods". Penny Farfan. Researching Popular Entertainment, edited by Kim Baston and Jason Price, Routledge, forthcoming.
  • "Queer American Drama: Plays, Replays, Yet-To-Be-Plays". Penny Farfan. The Cambridge History of Queer American Literature, edited by Benjamin A. Kahan, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming. 384-397. (2024)
  • "Sue-Ellen Case". Penny Farfan. The Routledge Anthology of Women's Theatre Theory and Criticism, edited by J. Ellen Gainor and Catherine Burroughs, Routledge. 349-356. (2024)
  • "Ibsen Postcards/Postcard Ibsens: Domesticating Modernism". Penny Farfan. Modern Drama, vol. 65, no. 3. 271-354. . (2022)
  • "Monstrous Arousals: La Rose, Un Faune, La Faune". Penny Farfan. Monsters in Performance: Essays on the Aesthetics of Disqualification, edited by Michael Chemers and Analola Santana, Routledge. 73-86. (2022)
  • "Staging The Penelopiad" . Penny Farfan with Kelly Thornton and Vanessa Porteous . Adapting Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid's Tale and Beyond, edited by Shannon Wells-Lassagne and Fiona McMahon, Palgrave Macmillan. 213-238. (2021)
  • "Criticial Visions". Penny Farfan. Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Plays by Women: The Early Twenty-First Century, edited by Penny Farfan and Lesley Ferris, University of Michigan Press. 1-20. (2021)
  • "Feminist Adaptations / Adaptations of Feminism: Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad". Penny Farfan. Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Plays by Women: The Early Twenty-First Century, edited by Penny Farfan and Lesley Ferris, University of Michigan Press. 23-31. (2021)
  • “On the Home Front: Designs for Living in British Theatre between the Wars”. Penny Farfan. Futility and Anarchy? British Literature in Transition, 1920-1940, edited by Dougal McNeill and Charles Ferrall, Cambridge University Press. 299-314. (2018)
  • "Ages of Arousal". Penny Farfan. Linda Griffiths, edited by Jacqueline Petropoulos, New Essays in Canadian Theatre, volume 9, Playwrights Canada Press. 20-34. (2018)
  • “Women Playwrights and the News: Colleen Murphy and Judith Thompson on ‘Fact-Inspired’ Drama”. Penny Farfan with Colleen Murphy and Judith Thompson. Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, vol. 31, no. 2. 73-98. (2017)
  • “‘Masculine Women and Effeminate Men’: Gender and Sexuality on the Modernist Stage”. Penny Farfan. British Theatre and Performance, 1900-1950, by Rebecca D’Monté, Methuen. 213-222. (2015)
  • “Historical Landscapes in Contemporary Plays by Canadian Women”. Penny Farfan. Contemporary Women Playwrights: Into the Twenty-First Century, edited by Penny Farfan and Lesley Ferris, Palgrave Macmillan. 231-243. (2013)
  • “The Folk and the Chosen One: Primitivism, Naturalism, and Nijinsky’s The Rite of Spring”. Penny Farfan. Discourses in Dance, vol. 5, no. 2. 15-27. (2013)
  • Theatre Journal. Penny Farfan, editor (2012-2013); co-editor (2010-2011). Association for Theatre in Higher Education/Johns Hopkins University Press.
  • “‘The Picture Postcard is a sign of the times’: Theatre Postcards and Modernism”. Penny Farfan. Theatre History Studies, vol. 32. 93-119. (2012)
  • “Women’s Modernism and Performance”. Penny Farfan. The Cambridge Companion to Modernist Women Writers, edited by Maren Linnett, Cambridge University Press. 47-61. (2010)