Anne Lancashire

Anne Lancashire, Professor Emerita, University of Toronto, holds a B.A. from McGill University and both A.M. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University. She was appointed to University College/University of Toronto in 1965, and from 1975 was a Full Professor of English, cross-appointed to both Drama and (from 1987) Cinema Studies, until her retirement in 2012. She taught courses in both the Department of English and the Cinema Studies Program: in the latter, INI 225Y: Popular American Film since 1970, and INI 237H: Science Fiction Film, as well as a good number of Independent Studies supervisions in popular film.

Her primary research field is English medieval and early modern theatre history, and her secondary field is American contemporary popular film. Her best-known publications since 2000 include London Civic Theatre: City Drama and Pageantry from Roman Times to 1558 (Cambridge: 2002), The Mayors and Sheriffs of London (open-access researched database launched 2009 and regularly updated: https://masl.library.utoronto.ca), and “London Street Theatre” in Handbook of Early Modern Theatre, ed. Richard Dutton (Oxford, 2009). In 2015 the Records of Early English Drama published her 3-volume collection, Civic London to 1558, of manuscript records of city-sponsored drama and music in London (U.K.) from 1287 to the 1558 accession of Elizabeth I. Other published books, chapters, and articles, 1965 to the present, cover topics such as plays by Thomas Middleton and by Shakespeare, the pastoral drama of John Lyly, grammar school theatre at London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral in the sixteenth century, London Lord Mayor’s Shows to 1642, Chaucer, Christopher Marlowe, bibliography, Georgette Heyer's Venetia, and the Star Wars films (6 items posted on her website: https://anne.artsci.utoronto.ca).

She is a past president of the Shakespeare Association of America (1988-89), past Canadian Secretary-Treasurer of The Malone Society (1977-1990), past member of numerous professional committees and boards, and currently a member of two editorial/advisory boards in early English drama and pageantry. In 2016 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and in 2020 was approved by London (UK)'s Common Council as a freeman of London. She has done many talks and public lectures on all of theatre history, drama, and film, including at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival on Star Wars, and numerous radio and television interviews.

She has held numerous previous administrative positions, including University Vice-Provost of Arts & Science and of Staff Relations, Vice Dean Academic of the Faculty of Arts & Science, and Vice-Principal and Program Director of University College.

Over her 47-year teaching career she taught 23 different undergraduate and 15 different graduate courses, in literature and drama from c. 1190 to the present, and in American popular film, especially science fiction film, from 1950 to the present. She has been the primary or secondary supervisor of over 30 graduate students, and has also supervised numerous undergraduate senior essays.

She is married to a fellow academic, Professor Ian Lancashire, and has three children.