About Me

Dr Joanna Jarvis

I am a senior lecturer in Design for Performance at the Birmingham Institute of Creative Arts, Birmingham City University. I completed my doctorate in 2019 with a thesis entitled:

Performance of the self in the theatre of the elite.

The King’s Theatre, 1760-1789: The opera house as a political and social nexus for women.

My background is in designing and making period costume for performance. I have combined my studies of dress and costume in the eighteenth-century with an interest in women’s attitudes to self-presentation through their clothes and current theories on the psychology of dress. This combination is providing a rich field of study with reference to women in the eighteenth-century.

My work with undergraduate students is an opportunity to enthuse the next generation in dress as material culture and what it tells us about ourselves, our attitudes and the society in which we live.

As part of building the research and extending my network within the field of dress and performance in the eighteenth century I am involved with several groups:

As part of the Dress in Context research centre I have been active in helping to organise our bi-annual Culture Costume and Dress conference. In 2021 our theme was The Body Politic: Dress, Identity and Power, addressing the role of dress and the body in the manifestation of power, whether through fashion, history, literature, or other fields. In my paper: The Regency Crisis of 1788: Dress as a visual marker of allegiance, I examined how women at the opera house used elements of dress to declare their allegiance during the Regency Crisis of 1788. The long-established use of fashion to declare political preferences took on heightened significance during this time, with the visual language of dress used to declare allegiance among the upper echelons of the ruling classes. Women played an important political role, and acting in this way gave them an element of autonomy in their reaction to what became one of the most divisive events of the Georgian era.

With my colleague Louise Chapman I organise the Patterns of Fashion and Patterns for Performance awards for the Costume Society of Great Britain. The society draws members from a wide variety of backgrounds who are passionate about the study of clothing and textiles in dress. It is keen to encourage new members, especially students, to become involved in their work and the society awards are an important part of this. Costume Society

I am a founder member of the Baskerville Society. A membership group dedicated to the study of the eighteenth-century typographer, printer, industrialist and Enlightenment figure, John Baskerville (1707-75). The Society aims to encourage research into and promote public knowledge and understanding of John Baskerville’s life, times and significance. Baskerville Society

The Baskerville society is an affiliate of the Centre for Printing History and Culture. CPHC

Published work:

Michael Burden and Jennifer Thorp editors (2020) ‘Natural Beauty or ‘paint painted’? Giovanna Baccelli by Thomas Gainsborough’, With a Grace not to be Captured: Representing the Georgina theatrical dancer, 1760-1830, Turnhout: Brepols.

http://www.brepols.net/Pages/ShowProduct.aspx?prod_id=IS-9782503583563-1

Caroline Archer-Parré and Malcolm Dick editors (December 2018) ‘Performance and print culture: Two eighteenth-century actresses and their attempts at image control’, Pen and Print: communication in the eighteenth-century, University of Liverpool Press.

https://liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/books/id/53166/

Mary Collins and Joanna Jarvis, (2016) ‘The Great Leap from Earth to Heaven: The Evolution of Ballet and Costume in England and France in the eighteenth-Century’, Costume, 50,2

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/05908876.2016.1165955

Recent conference papers:

Mrs Frances Abington, 1737 – 1815 The construction of an actress as fashion icon through the art of engravings. Costume society Conference, 30th June 2021 (online)

The Regency Crisis of 1788: Dress as a visual marker of allegiance. Culture, Costume and Dress. BCU, Birmingham, 6th May 2021 (online)

Costume for dance in late eighteenth-century London: How French was it? Dance Symposium, Oxford, April 2021 (online)