Academic Reading is professor of culture and creative industries at
King's College London. She teaches and researches gender and cultural memory with an
intersectional feminist approach. She was Head of King's Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries 2013-17 and Director of King's Arts and Humanities Research Institute 2018-22. She is professorial research associate at the
University of Glasgow. She is joint managing editor of the journal
Media, Culture and Society. Reading's scholarly publications are cited by scholars in
comparative literature, gender studies,
holocaust studies,
heritage studies,
memory studies, and
media studies, with growing interest within
environmental studies and
disability studies. In an interview with
The Guardian she analyses the significance of
citizen journalism and the
camera phone in the witnessing of the
2005 London Bombings. She reflects on singing and women's activism research for the
BBC's
Choral History of Britain. In an interview with
ABC Reading explains how digital technologies and globally networked memory or 'globital memory' is changing human responses to death and grief. .
Theatre Reading co-founded the feminist collective Strip Search Theatre in 1987, writing and directing plays that expose injustice and inequalities. Christina Ward suggests that Reading's plays fall within Anglophone 'trauma drama'. Anne Rüggemeier notes, however, that Reading's plays and productions operate at multiple levels with 'the collective transformation of symbolic, spiritual and emotional capital between the cast and audience' with theatre contributing to a 'restitutional assemblage'.
Kiss Punch Goodnight Reading's
Kiss Punch Goodnight was performed by Strip Search Theatre in 1987. The play, which tells the story of an incest survivor, is described by Mary Remnant in Methuen's
Plays for Women as 'Explicit, harrowing and shocking' adding 'the play pulls no punches in its premise that power and not love or sexual desire underlies child sexual abuse.'
Kiss Punch Goodnight previewed in
York before appearing at the
Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
The Scotsman notes, 'The horror of the atrocities against childhood in this innocent-looking prison emerge cogently and movingly into their awful legacy in the adult woman. Despite that this is not male-battering play but a positive and illuminating exploration of dark corner.'
Want During the East European
revolutions of 1989 and inspired by
feminism in Poland Reading wrote
Want, drawing on
life-histories she conducted with Polish women. Strip Search Theatre performed
Want in six Polish cities and six cities in the UK and Ireland.
Want dramatises Polish women's history and revolutionary struggles as they wait for rationed food, splicing
naturalism with
surrealist techniques and
distancing effects. Hard Core In 1990 Reading's
Hard Core, commisioned by Cardiff's WOT Theatre and directed by Jeremy James, was produced at the
Sherman Theatre, Cardiff and in London. In the
Western Mail Reading said the play was a response to an interview she conducted with a shop owner who sold firearms and pornography together. The play is set during the fall of the Roman Empire and explores totalitarianism, class and sexual decadence. Its sister play, ''Grandma's Garden,'' is a fairytale set in the 'unfenced mind' of Beatie, 71, who runs away from an abusive care home with her lover Lottie.
Falling Falling dramatises the story of a runaway mixed-race fifteen-year-old girl, Ket, who is groomed by an older white man. Ket escapes to discover sanctuary and resilience with her Caribbean grandmother. The play was performed in 1996 at the Bird's Nest, London. Theatre critic
Aleks Sierz describes
Falling as capturing 'unbearable pain' summed up in the image of Ket 'trying to remove a tampon after she is raped.' it was first performed at the UK's
Calm Down, Dear festival. The play is a monologue in the form of a mother's letter to her seven year old daughter. It was also part of King's 2015 festival
Fabrication with the script published in
Gender and Memory in the Globital Age. Filmmaker and writer
Vincent O'Connell directed a reading of
RP35, about a sculptor's obsessive collecting, at
Southwark Theatre. O'Connell later directed a rehearsed reading of
Cacti Hearts the first part of a trilogy 'Pre-Occupations' set in the Middle East, at London's Edric Theatre, also performed in Tromso, Norway. In
The Unkind, inspired by
Nikolaus Geyrhater' s film
Homo Sapiens, Reading writes dialogue in a future language beyond
climate change,
drone warfare and
fascism. The Unkind was performed at London's Oval House Theatre as part of a
International Women's Day celebration.
BOOKS Polish Women, Solidarity and Feminism Reading's
Polish Women Solidarity and Feminism examines the impact on women's lives of the revolutions in Eastern Europe.The book analyses how sexism in Polish culture is constructed in language, history, memory and social policies by the communist state and in the Polish trade uniion movement
Solidarity. The book provides a detailed account of Polish feminist history and emergent feminist groups after 1989, providing a sense of hope. Peggy Watson argues that the book's interviews with Polish women 'puncture the systematic silence which has existed around gender issues'.
The Social Inheritance of the Holocaust: Gender Culture and Memory Reading's
The Social Inheritance of the Holocaust challenges
Geoffrey Hartman's assumption that the Nazi
Holocaust was gender-neutral. Reading argues that 'both the event itself and its subsequent memory are gendered.' Focussing on Jewish and
Romani Holocaust victims and survivors, Reading shows how the Holocaust's intersectional gendered impacts are culturally articulated and remembered by young people in Poland, the UK and US from Holocaust historiography, at sites of genocidal atrocity, in museums, autobiographies and films. Reading argues that including an understanding of gender enables a more complex understanding of the path to genocide and to undertanding how memories of the holocaust are handed down.
Cultural Memories of Nonviolent Struggles The book examines cultural memories of peace and non-violent struggles through movements that include
Mahatma Gandhi's Salt March,
the Suffragette movement, Poland's
Solidarity,
Aboriginal people's cultural restitution,
The Second Intifada, anti-war museums and independent
video games. Reading examines singing and the reworking of
peace songs at
Greenham Common. A review by Rachel Julian argues that the book demonstrates the importance of cultural memory for future non-violent success. Reading contends that from before birth, through natal imaging, until after death, through digital memorials, human lives are now mnemonically configured in the 'globital memory' field. The book influenced a reorientation in memory studies towards digital technologies and digital memory.
The Right to Memory The Right to Memory explores the arguments for a 'just memory culture': In an interview, Reading said individuals and communities have the right to make public stories about the past 'in their own way'. She develops a
typology of memory rights already found in international laws, including legal protections for
indigenous peoples. In the face of
extinction events and
climate change Reading makes the case for integrating
non-human and
more-than-human memory rights.
Autistic Dreaming Autistic Dreaming demonstrates how autistic people's cultural activism 'functions as a crucial repository for embodied knowledge'. The book draws on
critical disability studies and
neuroqueer theory to neuroqueer to memory studies. The research examines speaking and non-speaking autistic people's
life writing, websites, films and art work from around the world. The book highlights particular 'characteristics of autistic memory such as heightened sensory experiences, deep ecological connection and interactions with objects, environments and energies'. ==Publications==