Mary Isbell

• Title / Position: Lecturer, Postdoctoral Associate in Interdisciplinary Performance Studies
• Organization: Yale University
• Website: maryisbell.net
• Twitter: @MaryIsbell19

I am a Postdoctoral Associate in Interdisciplinary Performance Studies at Yale (IPSY), and received my PhD in English from the University of Connecticut in May 2013. I specialize in nineteenth-century literature and performance history, and am revising my dissertation, Amateurs: Home, Shipboard, and Public Theatricals in the Nineteenth Century, for publication. I am learning the intricacies of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) as I prepare a digital edition of The Young Idea, a rare journal that was circulated in manuscript aboard the HMS Chesapeake and printed by facsimile in London in 1867. At the Digital Humanities Summer Institute in Victoria, I took a course on 3D modeling (using the free program, Sketchup) and am working now on a model of the makeshift theatre constructed aboard the Chesapeake. I am very interested in reconstructing performance venues that no longer exist and using those virtual venues as platforms for future performances. With Judith Hawley, I direct the international interdisciplinary network known as RAPPT (Research into Amateur Performance and Private Theatricals) and maintain the website rappt.org.