Dr Ian Maxwell

Diploma of Arts, Dramatic Arts (DADA) Victorian College of the Arts 1990
BA (Honours) University of Sydney 1991
PhD University of Sydney 1997

Senior Lecturer

Room S102, Woolley Building, A20 Manning Rd

+61 2 9351 6847

Ian Maxwell is a graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts School of Drama, where he majored in Directing. Subsequent to that training, he embarked upon academic work at the University of Sydney, where he completed his PhD—an ethnography of Hip Hop culture in the suburbs of Sydney in the 1990s—in 1997. Appointed to academic staff that year, Ian is now Chair of the Department.

Ian teaches a range of units of study: theories of acting at undergraduate and postgraduate level; two second year units—the core introductory unit PRFM 2601 Being There and PRFM 2604 Sociology of Theatre.

He has published extensively on a range of topics, including his 2003 book, "Phat Beats, Dope Rhymes": Hip Hop Down Under Comin' Upper (Wesleyan), chapters in several collections and a number of journals.

Ian is a member of the Academic Board and of the Human Research Ethics Committee of the University of Sydney. He is also Secretary of the Australasian Association for Theatre, Drama and Performance Studies.

• Popular music and subcultures
• Phenomenology and Theories of Acting
• Sociology of the Field of Performance Making
• Australian Theatre and Performance History 1968-1974
• Theatre Directing
• Sport and Performance

• Inventing Tradition: Nationalist/Militarist Display and the Australian Football League
  A contribution to the 'Sport as Performance' research cluster
  Supported by 2007 R&D Research Grant

• "A raffish experiment": The writings of Rex Cramphorn Sydney, Currency: forthcoming
• Co-editor (with John Clark and Peter MacCallum) Australian Arts: Where the Bloody Hell Are You? University of Sydney Press/RIHSS, 2007
• "Phat Beats, Dope Rhymes": Hip Hop Down Under Comin' Upper Wesleyan, 2003

Reviews
Tom Solomon at IASPM or download pdf
Kurt Iveson in Perfect Beat link or download pdf

• "Music As a Cultural System" in Context Special Issue: Renegotiating Musicology edited by Aaron Corn (in press)
• "The Ritualization of Performance (Studies)" in St John (ed) Victor Turner and Cultural Performance New York: Berghahn (in press)
• "There's No There There" in Bloustein (ed) Sonic Synergies Ashgate, Hampshire (in press)
• "Advocating Australian Arts" in Clark, MacCallum and Maxwell (eds) Australian Arts: Where the Bloody Hell Are You? University of Sydney Press/RIHSS, 2007
• "'Runnin’ Amok': An Acoustemology of Place Resounding in Penrith, Western Sydney" in McAuley (ed) Contested Ground: Performance and the Politics of Place Peter Lang, Brussels, 2006
• "Parallel Evolution: Performance Studies at the University of Sydney" in The Drama Review Spring 2006, Vol. 50, No. 1 (T189), Pages 33-45 link to abstract and download
• "When Worlds Collide: A Subculture Writes Back" Perfect Beat: The Pacific Journal of Research into Contemporary Music and Popular Culture v7 n2 January 2005: 3-19
• "Rex Cramphorn" in Fifty Key Directors (edited by Shomit Mitter and Maria Shevtsova), Routledge, London and New York, 2005, pp 178-185
• "Jim Sharman" in Fifty Key Directors (edited by Shomit Mitter and Maria Shevtsova), Routledge, London and New York, 2005, pp 212-217
• "Neil Armfield" in Fifty Key Directors (edited by Shomit Mitter and Maria Shevtsova), Routledge, London and New York, 2005, pp 236-242
• "More than 'Dead Pet Acting': Legacies of Stanislavsky" in Sydney Studies in English Volume 30 2004: 93-110
• "The Curse of Fandom" in Popular Music Studies: International Perspectives Hesmondhalgh, David and Keith Negus (eds) London: Arnold, 2002, pp
• "Retrospecting: the Midday Movie and the History of Australian Painting" in Laura Ginters and Barbara Campbell (eds) Flesh Winnow Sydney: Power Publications, 2002.
• "Acting and the Limits of Professional Craft Knowledge" in Practice Knowledge and Expertise in the Health Professions Higgs, Joy, & Angie Titchen (eds) Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2001
• "Sydney Stylee: Hip Hop Down Under Comin' Up" in Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop Outside the USA Tony Mitchell (ed) Wesleyan University Press, 2001, pp259-279
• "Learning in/through Crisis" in Australasian Drama Studies 39 (October 2001): 43-57

• "Another menace to lead the youth astray" in The Australian, November 17th, 2006 link
• "The Middle Years: Death Defing Theatre Transformed" for The Critical Dialogues Project Urban Theatre Projects
• "The once and future Performance Space" in RealTime 64, Jan-Feb 2005 link

• PRFM 2601 Being There (Semester 1, 2007)
• PRFM 2604 Sociology of Theatre (Semester 2, 2007)
• PRFM 3606 Theories of Acting (Semester 2, 2007)
• PRFM 6901 Acting: From Theory to Workshop (Semester 1, 2007)
• PRFM4000/PRFM 5901 Critical Theory and Performance (Semester 1, 2007)

Completed PhD supervisions

• Yana Taylor 2007 "Doctors of Presence: Tadashi Suzuki's Training Methods in Sydney Contemporary Performance
• Pauline Manley 2007 "Opening the Pod: Involution and Dehiscence in Contemporary Dance"
• Stuart Grant 2007 "Gathering to Witness"
• Paul Moore 2005 "Longing to Belong: Trained Actors' Attempts to Enter the Profession"
• Mark Seton, 2004 "Forming (In)Vulnerable Bodies: Intercorporeal Experiences in Actor Training in Australia"
• Glen McGillivray, 2004 "Theatricality: A Critical Genealogy"
• Jeff Stewart 2007 "Sentiment and the Possibility of Love: Essays from Home" (M.Arts dissertation)

Current PhD projects

• Jo Donovan "Cultural Analysis of Hard Core Punk Subculture"
• Robin Dixon "Implied Theories of Acting in the Late Roman Republic"
• Nicholas Hope "Inner Place: the impact of climate and landscape on performance"
• Daniel Johnston "Active Metaphysics: Phenomenological Readings of Acting"