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Jane Montgomery Griffiths

Photo: Dr Jane Montgomery Griffiths

Biography

Jane Montgomery Griffiths has recently won an Australian Research Council Linkage Grant in conjunction with Malthouse Theatre, and will be leaving her teaching role in the program to take up her new position as a APDI Research Fellow until 2012. During her Fellowship, Jane will still be available to undertake Masters, PhD, and in some cases, Honours supervision.

Jane specialises in ancient Greek drama in contemporary performance and has combined academic teaching and research in the UK and Australia with professional performance practice as an award winning actor and director in the UK in over forty professional productions.

She has held university positions in both drama and Classics departments, and has taught at York St John's and Bretton Hall University Colleges (the University of Leeds), La Trobe University and the University of Melbourne. She has also held two visiting Fellowships at Cambridge University as the Judith E. Wilson Visiting Junior Fellow in Drama and the inaugural Leventis Fellow in Greek Drama, during which time she was Director of the Triennial Cambridge Greek Play, directing acclaimed productions of Euripides’ Trojan Women and Sophocles’ Electra. She first came to Monash in 2003 as a Lecturer in Drama in the Centre for Drama and Theatre Studies, but the following year moved to take up convenorship of the Classical Studies Program.

Her research into performance practice and classical scholarship has continued with work on Electra in performance, and, in 2007, with an acclaimed one-woman show on Sappho, which she wrote and performed on commission from The Stork Stage, Melbourne (and which will be produced by Malthouse Theatre in 2010). She is has recently finished a run of her one-woman play on the late antiquity philosopher and mathematician, Hypatia, for The Stork Stage

Jane is editor-in-chief of Didaskalia, the international on-line academic journal dedicated Greek and Roman drama and performance practice.

She was convenor of the 2008 conference on Classical Reception Studies, ‘Refashioning the Classics’; was co-convenor of the 2006 conference Close Relations: the spaces of Greek and Roman performance for the University of Melbourne/Monash University; and was joint organiser of the Complex Electras Symposium at the University of Cambridge with Jennifer Wallace (2001).

She holds BA Hons./MA degrees from the University of Cambridge (King's College Scholar) and a PhD from the University of Melbourne (Helen M. Schutt Scholar: most outstanding female postgraduate in Arts).

Research Interests

  • Reception studies (particularly the reception of Greek and Roman performance)
  • Performance practice as research methodology
  • Psychoanalytic, feminist and phenomenological readings of Greek and Roman 'texts'
  • Personal voice theory, reflective practice and shifting methodologies in Classical scholarship
  • Sophocles’ Electra in performance
  • Sappho’s reception and affective voice
  • Application of critical and cultural theory to the Classics
  • Pedagogy and academic literacy in the teaching of Latin

Post-Graduate Supervision

Main Supervisor:

  • Miriam Riverlea, PhD candidate with Classical Studies and ECPS. Research Area: Classical Reception and Children’s Literature
  • Victoria Fritze, PhD candidate with Classical Studies Program. Research Area: The teaching of Classics in Australian schools.
  • Siobhan Privitera, MA candidate with Classical Studies Program. Research Area: Female shame in Archaic poetry.

Associate supervisor:

  • Natalie Miller, PhD candidate with School of Political and Social Inquiry. Research Area: Hannah Arendt and the political actress in Greek tragedy
  • Tamara Searle, MA candidate with Drama and Theatre Studies. Research Area: Live Art and performance as research

Grants and Awards

2009-2012 - ARC Linkage Grant (with Malthouse Theatre): ‘Staging Sappho: Investigating New Methodologies in Classical Performance Reception
2007 - Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence
2007 - School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics Small Grant. Project title: Old Words, New Worlds- Classical Reception Studies in Australasia
2006-7 - Arts Faculty Teaching Led Research Grant: Latin for Academic Literacy

Committee and Community Service; Professional Membership

Deputy Associate Dean (Graduate Research), Faculty of Arts, 2008-2009
Member of VCE Classical Societies and Cultures Review Panel for Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority..
Council Member, Classical Association of Victoria.
School Honours Convenor for LCL, 2007-2008.
Member of LCL ESEC Committee 2008-9; LCL school Executive 2008.

Publications

Books

Griffiths, J, Monaghan, P & Sear, F (eds) (forthcoming 2010), The Spaces of Greek and Roman Theatre, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

Book chapters (forthcoming)

Griffiths, J (forthcoming 2010), 'The space of memory’ in The Spaces of Greek and Roman Theatre, J Griffiths, P Monaghan & F Sear (eds), Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. (Accepted 2008)
Griffiths, J (forthcoming 2010), ‘Acting Perspectives: the phenomenology of performance as a route to reception’, in E Hall (ed) Theorising Performance: Greek Drama, Cultural History, and Critical Practice, Duckworth, London. (Accepted 2008)
Griffiths, J 2009, ‘The Abject Eidos: embodying trauma in Sophocles’ Electra’, in J Parker and T Mathews (eds), Translation, Trauma and Tradition, Oxford University Press, Oxford. (Accepted 2008)

Griffiths, J (forthcoming), ‘Shaming Words: Performing the name in Sophocles’ Electra’ in J Davidson (ed.) Greek Drama IV, Oxbow Books, Oxford. (Accepted 2008)
Griffiths, J (forthcoming 2010), ‘Feeling the words in Sophocles’ Electra’, in A Bakogianni (ed.) Dialogues with the Past: Reception Theory and Practice II, BIC Supplement, London.

Refereed journal articles

Griffiths, J 2008, ‘Remembering Derry’ in Didaskalia, Volume 7, no. 2.
Griffiths, J 2007, ‘The Experiential Turn: shifting methodologies in Performance Reception’,
New Voices, Issue 2, pp. 73-90.

Other publications

Griffiths, J 2007, ‘Case Study 2 with Lorna Hardwick: Staging the Cambridge Greek Play 2001’, Practitioners’ Voices in Classical Reception Studies, Issue 1, pp. 16-25.
Griffiths, J 2005, ‘The Cambridge Greek Play’, in N Upton (ed.), In Good Company: A Snapshot of Theatre and The Arts, Cambridge Arts Theatre Publications, Cambridge.

Practice-based Performance Research

English, Communications and Performance Studies

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Research

Teaching programs