Madeline Fanton

Graduate Student

Bio

Madeline Fanton is a PhD candidate and Regent’s Fellow (2018) at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She received her B.A. in Drama from UC Irvine and her M.A. in Theater History from California State University, Northridge. Her research examines the relationship between performance, memory, and history, particularly in the tumultuous 20th century in the United States. Her work interrogates the uses of forgetting in the performance of cultural memory and public history, with particular attention to the centrality of nationalism in the drama, print culture, commemoration, and quotidian performances of American life after the First World War. 

Madeline recently completed her time as the Artist-Scholar in Residence (Fall 2023) at Westmont College where she taught Great Literature of the Stage and directed Chiara Atik’s Poor Clare. To build upon the play’s social commentary surrounding economic inequality, Madeline coordinated with local organizations in Santa Barbara to facilitate a sock drive and volunteer fair. 

Madeline is the recipient of the 2024 Graduate Division Dissertation Fellowship. In 2019, she was selected as a Fellow in the Mellon Engaging Humanities program, an interdisciplinary program where graduate students and faculty work together to develop cross-disciplinary courses and pedagogical strategies that encourage undergraduates to participate in humanities education. Madeline has worked as Assistant Director under Irwin Appel for UCSB’s production of The Winter’s Tale in 2019 and as Education Director for Naked Shakes’ 2020 production, Immortal Longings. As Education Director, she conducted outreach to Santa Barbara County High Schools in order to provide them with access to the online production of Immortal Longings and organized talkbacks between UCSB actors and local High School students. She served as Education Director again in 2022, organizing a free student matinee of Romeo and Juliet for several Santa Barbara high schools.