Lisa Freeman

Candidate statement

Lisa A. Freeman is Professor and Head of the English Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is the author of Character's Theater: Genre and Identity on the Eighteenth-Century English Stage (UPenn, 2002), and Antitheatricality and the Body Public (UPenn, 2017), which was named the Runner-Up for the Association of Theatre in Higher Education Outstanding Book Award, a Finalist for the Theatre Library Association George Freedley Award, and an Honorable Mention for the Joe A. Callaway Prize. She is also the editor of the Sarah Siddons volume for Pickering and Chatto's Lives of Shakespearean Actors series and has published articles, essays, and reviews in publications including ECF, ECTI, SEL, TLS, Theatre Survey and Theatre Journal. She has held fellowships from the Huntington Library, the Newberry Library, and Chawton House Library and is a co-founder and organizer of both the Newberry Library Eighteenth-Century Seminar and the R/18 Collective. She has served ASECS in a variety of capacities, including co-chair Executive Director Search (2020-2021), Women's Caucus Trustee (2018-2022), Executive Board Member-at-Large (2015-2018), co-chair Women's Caucus (2013-2015), and co-chair Masquerade Ball Committee (2013-2014, 2017-2018). She is committed to strengthening and promoting ASECS as a vibrant and vital intellectual and scholarly organization for a diverse community of dix-huitièmistes across all fields. She believes it is especially crucial for the future of ASECS that it find ways to support and be more inclusive of members who are contingent or non-tenure track faculty, work in public humanities positions, or work outside the academy altogether.