About

Tracy C. Davis is the Ethel M. Barber Professor of Performing Arts and a Professor of Theatre and English at Northwestern University. Her academic specialization includes 19th-century British theatre history, gender and theatre, and performance theory. She regularly teaches courses on 19th-century culture, theatre history, and historiography. Her current research focuses on mid-19th-century liberalism. Davis has held teaching and research positions at numerous institutions including the University of Cologne, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, Harvard University, University of Glasgow, Bristol University, Queen's University in Kingston, University of Calgary, and Queen Mary University London, among others. She is series editor for 'Theatre and Performance Theory' published by Cambridge University Press and co-editor for 'Transnational Theatre Histories' and 'Critical Media Histories: Performance and Repertoires.' Her work encompasses a broad range of topics within theatre and performance studies, with notable contributions to understanding the history and historiography of theatre, gender, and performance, as well as the political and social contexts of theatrical practices.

Research topics

• Art history
• History
• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Art
• Sociology
• Geography
• Medicine
• Ancient history
• Law
• Oncology
• Engineering
• Media studies
• Mathematics
• Genealogy
• Meteorology
• Physics
• Aesthetics
• Literature
• Internal medicine
• Archaeology
• Environmental science
• Gastroenterology
• Gender studies

Selected publications

• Voice of a He/Sa Faculty Member

  2025-09-24

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Development and Application of the Training Needs Assessment for the Child Welfare Workforce (tna-Cww)

  Human Services Organizations Management Leadership & Governance · 2025-07-12

  article

  Identifying child welfare (CW) workers’ training needs is challenging as they have diverse and complex roles and responsibilities. In this article, we describe our mixed methods approach to develop and examine the utility of the Training Needs Assessment for the CW Welfare Workforce (TNA-CWW). Through focus groups with 23 supervisors and administrators, we identified 72 practice competencies across 9 areas. We then administered the TNA-CWW to a statewide CW workforce (<i>n</i> = 1,018). Respondents indicated some level of need for training related to each competency. Social workers’ top training needs were related to assessing social/environmental factors, preventing burnout, and assessing sexual abuse. Supervisors’ top training needs were related to collaboration, progressive discipline, and implicit bias and racism. We also found that training needs varied by area of responsibility and region. The findings suggest the TNA-CWW is a valid instrument that agencies can use to inform workforce development.

  PublisherDOI

• Introduction:

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2024-02-01 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Tracy C. Davis outlines facets of tradecraft in theatre and performance studies (TaPS). Performances based on dramatic texts or social interactions can take into account distinctions between an aesthetic focus, case studies of performance history, and extrinsic cultural factors; each kind of research prioritizes particular kinds of information and has predominant methodologies for analysis. Additionally, Davis explicates the incompleteness and unrecoverability of performances in relation to different methodologies, and the salience of theory to different methodological traditions. Ultimately, combinations are likely in order to address the complexity of TaPS research.

  PublisherDOI

• TDR volume 67 issue 2 Cover and Front matter

  TDR/The Drama Review · 2023

  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
  • Environmental science

  An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

  DOI

• In This Age of Consumerism, What Are the Implications of Giving Students What They Want?

  2023-06-22 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This chapter examines the tensions between the student affairs profession's contemporary focus on student learning and its historical focus on service. It explores the advantages and disadvantages of treating collegians as learners versus customers, and the implications for teaching and learning. University officials are increasingly viewing students as consumers, and campus services are changing to cater to their needs. In an environment of declining public support of higher education, corporate funding is encroaching into school matters and blurring important distinctions between business and educational practices. Corporate influences and the related values of financial profit, loyal consumerism, and timely efficiency are prevalent in today's higher education environment. The problems associated with using a business model in the context of higher education become even more complicated when applied to the student affairs profession.

  PublisherDOI

• Amelia Chesson (1833–1902)

  2023-09-11

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  One of the impediments to knowing about women critics who wrote for the Victorian press is that almost everything was anonymously published. Amelia Chesson (1833–1902) presents a unique opportunity to identify not only a woman who wrote for a widely circulated and well-respected daily newspaper, The Star, but also how she managed to do it. Her husband, who was a full-time journalist, channeled work to her – book reviews as well as complimentary tickets – which she parlayed into an income for herself. Accompanied by relatives or friends, she made her way from theatres and concerts halls late at night (or, in this case, late in the afternoon) to her husband's workplace, where she found space and light to write and then file in time for the morning edition. Her comprehensive outlook turns this performance of a Handel oratorio into a complex performative event incorporating a royal procession to the venue, a contingent of 2,500 musicians, the personnel to manage the crowd of nearly 12,000 spectators, and a postconcert opportunity to further gawk at the royal party.

  PublisherDOI

• Liberal Lives and Activist Repertoires

  2023 · 25 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Sociology

  This ambitious study traces the strategies of human rights activists to show how world-changing reform movements were shaped by women and men from modest backgrounds who were deeply attuned to the power of performance. Tracy C. Davis explores nineteenth-century reform campaigns through the pioneering work of a family of activists – prominent anti-slavery lecturer George Thompson, his daughter Amelia (the first female theatre and music critic for a British daily newspaper) and her husband, the political organizer Frederick Chesson. Engaging in some of the most important social struggles of the late Georgian and Victorian periods – including abolition, enfranchisement, and anti-genocide - this book reveals how two generations' insights into performance consolidated into activist tactics that persist today. Characterised by a skilful deployment of performance theory alongside deep and wide-ranging historical knowledge, this ground-breaking work demonstrates what 'dramaturgy' can teach us about 'history'.

  PublisherDOI

• Opera Fans: Female Stratagems and Social Power

  Eighteenth-Century Studies · 2022-06-01 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  During the eighteenth century, both at close quarters and in crowds, folding fans served two kinds of femininity—flirtatiousness and modesty—allowing women to communicate a variety of affects, interrogatives, and illocutionary acts. Cheaply printed "maps" of the King's Opera House annual box subscribers' lists mounted as fans for seasons between 1787 and 1808 open up an additional perspective. Within the opera house, women dominated social affairs and wielded political influence over elite London society and national politics. This essay posits scenarios about how the information on these convenient box-plan objects was utilized by women aristocrats, gentry, and commoners with respect to sociability, regimes of observation, celebrity, social status, and social mobility that enhanced both social control and self-advancement in a constantly recalibrated register of prestige.

  PublisherDOI

• Educating Bilingual Social Workers for the Child Welfare Workforce

  Advances in Social Work · 2022-11-08 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Spanish/English bilingual (SEB) speaking social workers are in high demand, particularly in the area of Child Welfare. Most require training and institutional support to increase their cultural and linguistic competence, yet the majority receive no specific education or support. As a result, many encounter inequities in the workforce. Research points to several elements that are essential to the education and development of SEB social workers. They include professional terminology, supervision in Spanish, and the opportunity to integrate theory and practice. To respond to the needs of a growing Spanish-speaking population, the UConn BSW Program has added a Child Welfare and Protection (CWP) track. CWP is designed to provide BSW SEB speaking students with specialized knowledge and experience to meet the needs of Latinx families served by the Connecticut Department of Children and Families (CT DCF). This paper describes how the UConn BSW program and DCF collaborated to re-envision social work education for SEB students and contribute to distributive justice for client and worker. The CWP Track prepares BSW students to work with a range of Spanish-speaking clients while facilitating institutional support including incentives to create a much-needed workforce pipeline for SEB social work students interested in child welfare.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Plays by Women: The Early Twenty-First Century. Edited by Penny Farfan and Lesley Ferris. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2021; 315 pp. $90 cloth, $34.95 paper, e-book available.

  TDR/The Drama Review · 2022-09-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Plays by Women: The Early Twenty-First Century. Edited by Penny Farfan and Lesley Ferris. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2021; 315 pp. 34.95 paper, e-book available. - Volume 66 Issue 3

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Kim Marra

  University of Iowa

  500 shared

• Philip Auslander

  500 shared

• Laurence Senelick

  Tufts University

  492 shared

• Gary M. Williams

  400 shared

• Harry J. Elam

  400 shared

• Russ Vince

  300 shared

• Ellen Hause

  Georgia Institute of Technology

  200 shared

• Jason Garrett

  Stanford University

  200 shared

Education

• PhD, Theatre Studies

  University of Warwick

  1984

Awards & honors

• Andrew W. Mellon Faculty Fellowship, Harvard University (199…
• American Philosophical Society Research Grant (1994-95)
• National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellowship (1…
• George Freedley Memorial Award (Theatre Library Association)…
• Clarence Ver Steeg Graduate Faculty Award (Northwestern Univ…