Bryan Reynolds

Picture of Bryan Reynolds
Distinguished Professor, Chancellor's Professor & Claire Trevor Professor
Claire Trevor School of the Arts
Chancellor's Fellow, 2005-2008
Chancellor's Professor 2012-present
Claire Trevor Professor 2016-present
Distinguished Professor 2023-present
Ph.D., Harvard University, English and American Literature and Language
B.A., University of California, Berkeley, English Literature
Phone: (949) 824-4806
Email: bryan.reynolds@uci.edu
University of California, Irvine
249 Drama
Mail Code: 2775
Irvine, CA 92697
Research Interests
Performance Activism Worldwide, Shakespeare, Renaissance Drama, Critical Theory, Transversal Poetics, Feminist Theory, Performance Theory, Cultural Studies, Postmodernism, Extreme Sports
Research Abstract
Reynolds’ work spans several disciplines, including critical theory, history, performance studies, extreme sports, intermedial theater, social semiotics, philosophy, cognitive science, and dramatic literature. It focuses on the experience and performance of consciousness, subjectivity, affect, and sociocultural differences, particularly the ideologies and passions that define them, both on and off the stage. With a number of collaborators in the humanities and arts, he developed the combined socio-cognitive theory, performance aesthetics, and research methodology of transversal poetics.

Reynolds has held visiting professorships at the University of London-Queen Mary, the University of Amsterdam, Utrecht University, the University of Cologne, University College Utrecht, and Goethe University-Frankfurt am Main; and he has taught at a number of other academic and performing arts institutions, including Deleuze Camp and The Grotowski Institute. He is the Artistic Director of the Transversal Theater Company, a director of theater, a performer, and a playwright, whose plays have been produced across the United States and Europe.

Reynolds is the author of Transversal Subjects: From Montaigne to Deleuze after Derrida (2009), Transversal Enterprises in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries: Fugitive Explorations (2006), Performing Transversally: Reimagining Shakespeare and the Critical Future (2003), and Becoming Criminal: Transversal Performance and Cultural Dissidence in Early Modern England (2002). And he is coeditor of The Return of Theory in Early Modern English Studies: Tarrying with the Subjunctive (2011), Critical Responses to Kiran Desai (2009), Rematerializing Shakespeare: Authority and Representation on the Early Modern English Stage (2005), and Shakespeare Without Class: Misappropriations of Cultural Capital (2000). He is also co-general editor of a book series, Performance Interventions, from Palgrave Macmillan.
Publications
Excess & Joy: Philosophical Transversations, with Guy Zimmerman (PCP Press, 2022)
The Transversality of Gregory de la Haba: The Future of Art and Myth are Upon Us (PCP Press, 2022)
Intermedial Theater: Performance Philosophy, Transversal Poetics, and the Future of Affect (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)
Performance Studies: Key Words, Concepts, and Theories, Editor (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015)
The Return of Theory in Early Modern English Studies Vol. 2, Co-Editor, with Paul Cefalu & Gary Kuchar (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)
The Return of Theory in Early Modern English Studies: Tarrying with the Subjunctive, Vol. 1, Co-Editor, with Paul Cefalu (Houndmills, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

Transversal Subjects: From Montaigne to Deleuze after Derrida (Houndmills, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).

Critical Responses to Kiran Desai, Co-Editor, with Sunita Sinha (New Delhi, India: Atlantic Publishers, 2009).

Transversal Enterprises in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries: Fugitive Explorations (Houndmills, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).

Rematerializing Shakespeare: Authority and Representation on the Early Modern English Stage, Co-Editor, with William West (Houndmills, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).

Performing Transversally: Reimagining Shakespeare and the Critical Future (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

Becoming Criminal: Transversal Performance and Cultural Dissidence in Early Modern England (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002).

Shakespeare Without Class: Misappropriations of Cultural Capital, Co-Editor, with Donald Hedrick (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000).
Other Experience
Artistic Director
Transversal Theater Company
Last updated
08/17/2023