The university community is warmly invited to a new exhibition currently taking place in the Berkeley Library.
The ‘Beckett Beyond’ exhibition features thirteen research zines produced by third-year Drama students as part of the ‘Studies in Samuel Beckett: Beckett Beyond’ module.
The project highlights the significant contribution that undergraduate students make to academic research and is the result of a collaboration between the Department of Drama, Trinity Centre for Beckett Studies and the Library of Trinity College Dublin.
The zines will be catalogued and form part of the Library’s permanent collection. In addition, the digital copies will be hosted on TARA, Trinity’s institutional repository, which represents two new firsts for the university.
Céline Thobois, who designed and taught ‘Studies in Samuel Beckett: Beckett Beyond’, observed:
“Many of the students said that knowing that their work would be exhibited and archived motivated them to engage meaningfully with research and writing. Having a real public readership was exciting and empowering. Upon completion of the project, some of the students felt more confident in their academic skills.”
The zines have enabled students to investigate Beckett’s drama in connection with their own interests, and importantly, to share their findings with expert and non-expert audiences alike through a blended mix of text and image.
The module was taught with materials, methods and techniques specific to Drama and Beckett studies. By designing, leading and publishing their own research on Beckett, students actively contributed to the activities of the Trinity Centre for Beckett Studies.
The zines explore how Beckett’s drama intersects with, and investigates, themes of gender, subjectivity, perception, silence, music, food, the Magdalene Laundries, translation, collaborative creation, misreading and acting.
The students welcome constructive questions and comments (their contact details are available on the back cover of the zines). Visitors are also invited to submit feedback on the exhibition by scanning the QR code on the exhibition boxes.
Further information about the project is available in this Library Guide on these themes:
- Demystifying Beckett’s Drama through Research-Led Teaching and Creative, Formative Assessment
- Building Research and Communication Skills at Undergraduate Level with Research Zines
- Creative Assessment as a path towards Creative Practice: Contributing to Beckett Studies via Practice-as-Research
- The Motivating, Empowering and Challenging Effects of Publishing a Zine as an Undergraduate Student
- Finding One’s Scholarly Interests and Voice with the “Beckett Beyond” Zine Project
The exhibition takes place in the Iveagh Hall of the Berkeley Library and continues until the 5th of May.
Pictured in the above image, Front row, left to right are: Drama students and authors of the zines, James Doherty O’Brien and Lisl Adam; Sub Librarian (Teaching, Research and User Experience) Siobhán Dunne; and Drama students, Maureen Penrose, Mathilde Guérin Guillermo and PhD researcher in Drama, module designer and lecturer, Céline Thobois.
Back row, left to right: Emeritus Professor in Drama, Stephen Wilmer, Teaching Fellow in Drama and a Senior Postdoctoral Researcher, Néill O’Dwyer, Professor in French, Sarah Alyn Stacey, Drama student, Eleanor Ffion Bett and PhD researcher, Alexandra Corey.