Tzen Sam

Thesis Title: Recovering the female voice - Ibsen's early English translators

Supervisor: Prof. Kirsten Shepherd-Barr

Research interests: Victorian and modern literature, C20th and C21st drama, translation studies, theatre and performance studies.

Doctoral research: 

My research focuses on the 'Ibsen battles' of the late-Victorian period when Henrik Ibsen's plays were first translated and performed in England. In particular, I consider the work of three women (Catherine Ray, Henrietta Frances Lord and Eleanor Marx) whose translations first introduced Ibsen to England. William Archer's subsequent project to canonise his translations of Ibsen as the authoritative English version have obscured the contributions of these women and consigned them to oblivion. Through close textual analysis of their pioneering translations, I reflect on what Luise von Flotow calls 'the phenomenon of the lost female translator' and assess the impact of this historical forgetting on the history of Ibsen's reception in England.

Other projects:

- I am currently the Research Assistant on a TORCH-funded collaboration between Professor Kirsten Shepherd-Barr and Breach Theatre a project to devise a play on Laura Kieler, the little-known model for Ibsen's A Doll's House. 

https://www.torch.ox.ac.uk/my-name-is-laura-kieler-the-true-story-of-ibs...

- I am a co-convenor of the TORCH Reimagining Performance Network, which aims to bridge the gap between research and practice and promote mutually beneficial conversations between theatre scholars and practitioners.

https://www.torch.ox.ac.uk/reimagining-performance-network 

- Teaching: GTA on Professor Sos Eltis's FHS Paper 6 course on 'Freedom, Anarchy, Strangeness and Decay: Oscar Wilde and Cultures of the Fin De Siècle. FHS dissertation supervisor for C20th and C21st drama.