Professor Catherine Boyle is Professor of Latin American Cultural Studies, and Director of the Centre for Language Acts and Worldmaking. Her research interests include Spanish and Latin American drama; cultural history; translation for stage and performance; translation of Shakespeare Spanish; and Spanish American Women’s writing, including Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Gabriela Mistral, Violeta Parra, Isidora Aguirre. Catherine teaches modules on areas from Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and the context of colonial New Spain, to cultural expressions of the Southern Cone, cultural history and memory, Gender in Spanish America, Hispanic theatre, and translation and performance studies.
Catherine studied Modern Foreign Languages at the University of Strathclyde, and then took an MA and PhD at the University of Liverpool. She returned to Strathclyde for her first academic post, and subsequently took up a post in Latin American Studies at King’s in 1990. She was Head of Department from 1997-2006, and became Professor of Latin American Cultural Studies in 2007. She became Head of the newly formed Department of Spanish, Portuguese & Latin American Studies in 2010.
Catherine Boyle’s research has always been informed by the investigation of the ways in which cultural expressions are produced within their socio-historic context. This has led to extensive work in the areas of cultural studies, theatre and translation. Since her doctoral thesis (1986), published as Chilean Theater, 1973-1985. Marginality, Power and Selfhood (1992), she has developed methodologies for the study and practice of theatre in text and performance, incorporating ideas of cultural transmission and translation into the investigation of theatre practice, particularly in the Southern Cone. This has led to a number of translations and theatre work, most notably with the Royal Shakespeare Company for their Spanish Golden Age Season, for which she acted as academic consultant and translator of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s Los empeños de una casa as House of Desires (2004). A co-edited book (with David Johnston), The Spanish Golden Age in English. Perspectives on Performance (2007), derived from this experience, and seeks to explore the ways in which the ‘academic’ and the ‘creative’ meet in the performance space.
Catherine Boyle is Principal Investigator on the major Research Grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council of over £765,439 on Spanish and Spanish American Theatres in Translation. A Virtual Environment for Research and Practice. The project is now more commonly known as Out of the Wings: www.outofthewings.org.
Theatre and Performance Publications
Books
The Spanish Golden Age in English: Perspectives on Performance : Perspectives on Loss and Discovery. Reading and Reception. / Boyle, Catherine; Johnston, David .London : Oberon Books, 2007.
House of desires . / Boyle, Catherine M.London : Oberon, 2004. [An adaptation of the play originally written by the seventeenth-century nun Sor Juana Inéz de la Cruz]
Articles and Book Chapters
Violence in memory : Translation, dramatization and performance of the past in Chile. / Boyle, Catherine.Cultural Politics in Latin America. BFI Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. p. 93-112.
A feminist translates. / Boyle, Catherine.In: Bulletin of the Comediantes, Vol. 67, No. 1, 2015, p. 149-166.
On Mining Performance: Marginality, Memory and Cultural Translation in the Extreme. / Boyle, Catherine.Differences on Stage . ed. / Alessandra De Martino Cappuccio; Paolo Puppa; Paola Toninato. Newcastle upon Tyne : Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013. p. 207-223.
‘Antigona’, de Gabriela Mistral, y los brotes gemelos de la memoria y el olvido. / Boyle, Catherine.In: Cátedra de Artes, Vol. 11, 01.2012, p. 13-30.
La transcripción del King Lear de Nicanor Parra : la transfiguración de la composición. / Boyle, Catherine.In: Taller De Letras, Vol. 48, 2011, p. 149-159.
Performance and Artistic Collaborations
In addition to her work on ‘Out of the Wings’, Catherine runs the ‘Translating Cultural Extremity Project’ working with theatre practitioners interested in testing the possibilities of translating experiences that seem remote from ours.