Elizabeth Dyrud Lyman
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Elizabeth Dyrud Lyman’s scholarly interests revolve around the fragmentary and imperfect notational systems through which artists express and interpret nonlinguistic ideas. Her recently completed manuscript, “Performing Marks,” champions the critical roles of novelty and indeterminacy in scripts and scores, and proposes performance as an ideal site for collaborative art and science research. Lyman is an assistant professor of English at Harvard University and teaches theater and performance.
At Radcliffe, Lyman will work on the first book-length history of dramatic stage directions in the West, from the earliest extant fragments of Greek papyri to contemporary and emerging practices. By expanding existing conceptions of what constitutes “stage direction,” and by revealing both the historical embeddedness and the instability and diversity of its physical and conceptual forms, Lyman complicates recent debates about the status and ownership of stage directions among authors, directors, critics, and the courts.
Lyman earned her AB in music from Stanford University and her PhD in English from the University of Virginia. Her work has been supported by fellowships and grants from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Getty Research Institute, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, Alpha Delta Kappa, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. At the beginning of her career, Lyman spent a decade as a professional opera singer.
