jfitzmaurice

Fitzmaurice Pic Canary Islands — **James Fitzmaurice**

Scriptwritng and Academic CV for James Fitzmaurice

Overview

I am Emeritus Professor of English at Northern Arizona University and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield. I was Director of Distance Learning for English at Sheffield from January of 2006 to August of 2014, but am now generally retired.

I was an undergraduate at Occidental College in Los Angeles, where I majored in Comparative Literature (English and Spanish). I went on to an MA in English at California State University, Long Beach and a PhD at the University of Iowa.

Research Interests

My present research focuses on connections between the visual arts and Margaret Cavendish’s poetry, fiction, and drama. My sense of visual arts is derived from research into painting, prints, and drawings that were available for Cavendish to see when she lived in Antwerp during the 1650s and in England in the 1660s. She thought of herself as a woman who painted in words and sometimes commented on art as it was collected for and displayed in country houses. She and her husband wrote within (and against) traditions of the representation of art and country houses found in the writings of William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson.

MOOC, Original Plays, and Screenplays

1. MOOC (MASSIVE OPEN ONLINE COURSE): LITERATURE OF THE ENGLISH COUNTRY HOUSE

Creator of project. Creator of content, including scripts for videos. Lead educator 2013 – 2015. No longer active with this project, which continues under the sponsorship of the School of English at the University of Sheffield and FutureLearn.

https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/country-house-literature/3

2. PLAY WITH FILMED DRESS REHEARSAL: Margaret Cavendish, Virginia Woolf, and the Cypriot Goddess Natura

This play was performed at the CVAR Museum for the Othello’s Island Conference on 8 April of 2017 in Nicosia Cyprus. The dress rehearsal took place on 7 April. The actors were students from the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University.

Cast. Virginia Woolf and Female Barista – Jess Hakin. Constantijn Huygens and Male Barista – Tom Cable. Margaret Cavendish – Lucy Morehen. Beatrix de Cusance and Joan – Morgan Reilly. Elizabeth Topp, Mary Evelyn, and Melissa – Emilie Philpott. John Evelyn and Cafe Customer – Jessica Brown.

Production. Henry Bell, a lecturer in performance at Sheffield Hallam University, directed. Jim Fitzmaurice, NAU and University of Sheffield, and Michael Paraskos, Imperial College, London, were producers. Script by Jim Fitzmaurice. Video camera work by Yiangos Studios. Video editing by Kalia Christou, University of Cyprus.

Thanks. Financial support from the University of Sheffield Foundation, the Department of Performance at Sheffield Hallam University, and the Othello’s Island Conference. Special thanks to Rita Severis of the CVAR Museum.

Video of Dress Rehearsal.

Performance Review in Early Modern Literary Studies. EMLS Review Cavendish Woolf. Performance review by Laura Knoppers in Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal, vol. 12 No. 2 , Spring 2018, pp. 223 – 227.

3.0 Barack Obama Remembers a Young Poet

Stage play – 40 minutes.

3.1 Obama Dreams of His Literary Father

Short Screenplay 30 minutes.

4.0 Peeling the Onion of Infinite Regress in Raymond Carver’s Iowa City Kitchen

One -hour stage play. Table read in Sheffield in January of 2018.

4.1 Raymond Carver and Derrida’s Zombie Army

Short screenplay (15 minutes). Screenplay movie (i.e., table read with images) produced by Wildsound, Toronto. https://wildsoundfestivalreview.com/2019/07/12/screenplay-movie-raymond-carver-and-derridas-zombie-army-written-by-james-fitzmaurice/

4.2 Ray Carver and Derrida’s Zombie Army

Television pilot (26 minutes).

Producer

Farce of the Fisherman. Farce of the Fisherman

Conference Organizer for 2018 – 2020

Feel free to write to me for information about these forthcoming professional meetings.

Society of Renaissance Studies, University of Sheffield, 3 to 5 July. Two sessions.
Othello’s Island Conference, Nicosia, Cyprus. Literature, history, and art history of the Eastern Mediterranean during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Also English Renaissance drama and Early Modern women’s writing. 15 – 17 April, 2019. 6 – 8 April, 2020. http://www.othellosisland.org/.

Academic Publications

Selected Books

Cavendish and Shakespeare: Interconnections, co-editor with Katherine Romack, Aldershot: Ashgate Press, 2006. A collection of essays.
The Sociable Letters of Margaret Cavendish. A critical edition that includes contextual material from the Cavendish family. Peterborough, Canada: Broadview Press, 2004.
Major Women Writers of Seventeenth-Century England, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1997. A modern-spelling, scholarly edition suitable for classroom use. Fitzmaurice: General editor; author of introduction. Sections edited by Fitzmaurice: The Rover by Aphra Behn (complete) and Sociable Letters by Margaret Cavendish (selections). With: Josephine Roberts (textual editor). Section editors: James Fitzmaurice, Josephine Roberts, Eugene Cunnar, Nancy Gutierrez, and Carol Barash. Pp. 408. Numerous reprintings.

Selected Journal Articles and Book Chapters

“Robert Herrick, Collectors, and the Mediterranean Trade in Art,The Journal of Mediterranean Studies edited by Lisa Hopkins vol, 25, 2016, pp. 65 – 82.
“Whimsy and Medieval Romance in the Life of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle,” in Authority, Authorship and Aristocratic Identity in Seventeenth Century England: William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle, and his Political, Social and Cultural Connections, eds. Peter Edwards and Elspeth Graham, Brill, Leiden, 2016, pp. 60 – 82 .
“Walking on Figs: Obama as Young Writer in Literary Los Angeles,” in The Literary Writings of Barack Obama, eds. Henry Veggian and Richard Purcell. Palgrave-Macmillan, 2016, pp. 79-99.
“Paganism, Christianity, and the Faculty of Fancy in the Writing of Margaret Cavendish,” in God and Nature in the Thought of Margaret Cavendish, eds. Brandie Siegfried and Lisa Sarasohn, Ashgate Press, 2014, pp. 77 – 92.
“Margaret Cavendish, Richard Flecknoe, and Raillery at the Salon of Beatrix de Cusdance,” English Studies, vol. 92, no. 7 (November 2011), pp. 771 – 785.
When an Old Ballad is Plainly Sung’: Musical Lyrics in the Plays of Margaret and William Cavendish” in Oral Traditions and Gender in Early Modern Literary Texts, eds. Mary Ellen Lamb and Karen Bamford. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007, pp. 153 – 168.
“Historical Linguistics, Literary Interpretation, and the Romances of Margaret Cavendish,” in English Historical Pragmatics: Explorations in Methodology and Data, edited by Irma Taavitsainen and Susan Fitzmaurice. De Gruyter, 2007. pp 267 – 284.
“‘The Lotterie’: A Transcription of a Manuscript Play Probably by Margaret Cavendish,” Huntington Library Quarterly, vol. 66 (2003), pp. 155 – 67.
“Fear of the Supernatural as a ‘Pleasante and Merry Humour’ in Two of Newcastle’s Comedies,” in Fear and its Representations in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, eds., Anne Scott and Cynthia Kosso, Brepols, 2002 (Arizona Studies in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, 6), pp. 189 – 205.
“William Cavendish and Two Entertainments by Ben Jonson,” The Ben Jonson Journal, vol. 5 (1998, appeared 1999), pp. 63 – 80.
“The Language of Gender and a Textual Problem in Aphra Behn’s The Rover,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen [journal of the Modern Language Society of Finland], vol. 96, 1995, pp. 283 – 293.
“Aphra Behn and The Abraham’s Sacrifice Case,” Huntington Library Quarterly, vol. 56, summer, 1993, pp. 319 – 326.
“Margaret Cavendish on Her Own Writing: Evidence from Revision and Handmade Correction.” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, vol. 85, September, 1991, pp. 297 – 307.
“Carew’s Funerary Poetry and the Paradox of Sincerity,” Studies in English Literature, vol. 25, January, 1985, pp. 127 – 144.