Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory Commons^™

Contagious Animality: Species, Disease, And Metaphor In Early Modern Literature And Culture, Jeremy Cornelius

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In my dissertation, Contagious Animality: Species, Disease, and Metaphor in Early Modern Literature and Culture, I close read examples of Renaissance drama alongside their contemporary cultural texts to examine anxieties around social differences as constructed and mediated through what I call “contagious animality” in early modern English culture. Animal metaphors circulated anxieties around social differences on the early modern cultural stage in English drama where animality elicits uncertainties about identitarian constructions of difference. In this vein, I close read formal elements and their interactions with early modern culture to argue that animal metaphors transmit modes of speciating difference in …

Elizabeth Robins Portrays Working Women In Suffragette Literature: A Reflection Through The Lens Of The 2015 Film, Suffragette, Joanne E. Gates

Presentations, Proceedings & Performances

I place the 2015-released film Suffragette within a context of the efforts Elizabeth Robins made to document and, by witnessing, to advocate, the early phases of the British Women’s Suffrage Movement in England. Robins wrote and participated across margins. An expatriate American living in England, she had no personal advantage to gain with a franchise. In her late forties and in ill health, she took perhaps only "safe" opportunities to thrust herself into the fray. But as Jane Marcus points out, with her research on the play that became Votes for Women, she took efforts to experience how working-class …

Literature, Pandemic, And The Insufficiency Of Survival: Boccaccio’S Decameron And Emily St. John Mandel’S Station Eleven, Anthony P. Russell

Interdisciplinary Journal of Leadership Studies

The question of literature’s utility in relation to the “real world” has been asked since at least the time of Plato. This essay examines an extreme instance of this problem by investigating two works, Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron (1349-1353) and Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven (2016), that argue for the value of art in the midst of catastrophe. Boccaccio’s collection of 100 tales, written in the context of the Black Plague, and Mandel’s post-apocalyptic novel about a world devastated by a killer flu, overlap and diverge in instructive ways in making their cases for the important role of literature in …

A Virada Performativa Do Grupo Galpão: Presença E Acontecimento No Espetáculo Nós, Fernando Luiz Silva Chagas, Julia Guimarães

Teatro: Revista de Estudios Escénicos / A Journal of Theater Studies

Abstract: This paper analysis the performative extent present in the play Nós (Us), by Grupo Galpão (State of Minas Gerais, Brazil). The approach is through the idea of theater as event and presence, based on concepts of the aesthetics of the performative (Fischer-Lichte), performative theater (Féral), and theater as an ontological event (Dubatti). In this sense, performativity is presented as an instrument of reflection and analysis of the contemporary theater, which has been troubling the traditional paradigms of representation in the performing arts. We depart from practical elements of the theatrical phenomenon to approach the problematization subscribed to …

Review Of Placing Charlotte Smith, Eds Elizabeth A. Dolan And Jacqueline M. Labbe, Heather Heckman-Mckenna

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

A review of Placing Charlotte Smith edited by Elizabeth A. Dolan and Jacqueline M. Labbe, written by Heather Heckman-McKenna

Review Of The Novel Stage: Narrative Form From The Restoration To Jane Austen, By Marcie Frank, Kathleen E. Urda

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

A review of Marcie Frank's The Novel Stage: Narrative Form from the Restoration to Jane Austen by Kathleen E. Urda

Negotiating Gender, Representing Landscape: Teaching Lady Anne Lindsay Barnard’S Letters, Journals And Watercolours From The Cape Colony (1797–1801), Lenka Filipova

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

The article focuses on Lady Anne Lindsay Barnard’s letters, journals and watercolours that she produced during her stay at the Cape Colony (1797–1801). Combining a series of tasks focused on close reading of Barnard’s work and a critical discussion of the historical context, the article provides a teaching strategy to examine her work with respect to the gendered discourse of the eighteenth century, and her approach to the Cape landscape and its inhabitants which both employs and, significantly, subverts contemporaneous conventions. More specifically, the tasks draw attention to Barnard’s use of ‘the modesty topos’ and the way she uses rhetorical …

Concise Collections: Teaching British Women Travelers, Tiffany Potter

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

No abstract provided.

Cooking Up Knowledge: Materiality, Recipes, And Jane Barker’S A Patch-Work Screen For The Ladies, Carolin Boettcher

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

The recipes included in Jane Barker’s A Patch-Work Screen for the Ladies (1723) appear to be some of the most jarring and out-of-context inclusions in the narrative. This article explores the relationship between Barker’s novel and the form of the recipe collection in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries on both a material and an epistemological level. The entanglements between recipes and the patchwork screen not only point to the processes of constructing and conveying knowledge, but also to the materiality of these processes as Galesia and the Lady build the patchwork screen. Her focus on the materiality of …

Postures After The Antique In Eighteenth-Century Portraits Of Women, Lauren K. Disalvo

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

This paper re-examines the relationship between eighteenth-century portraiture and the antique where women adopt the postures of floating female figures from Pompeiian wall paintings in eighteenth-century portraiture. I argue that eighteenth-century floating portraits afforded their female sitters an opportunity to assert classical knowledge while adhering to typical conventions of femininity.

Phaedra: The Influence And History Of A Dramaturgical Mystery, Kierstan K. Conway

The Downtown Review

Many have debated the possible performance of Seneca's plays. Theatre Historians have polarizing opinions on whether Seneca wrote them intending to perform for Roman Audiences. A comparative study of Euripides' Hippolyte, Seneca's Phaedra, and Sara Kane's Phaedra's Love demonstrates the flexibility of this story and its translation to different historical audiences. This further historical analysis illuminates clues within Seneca's text and proves the possibility of staging, offering a new take on plays previously thought of as "closet dramas."

The Importance Of Creation: Lessons From The Collision And Performing Justice Projects, Mariah Johnson

Symposium of Student Scholars

The Collision Project is a performance-based project that introduces young artists to an inspiration which drives them to create their own performative art. During my time participating in Kennesaw State University's 2022 New Connections Collision Project, I had the privilege of working alongside the talented youth graduates in the Department of Justice system. Through my first-hand experience and by examining the works through the lens of Megan Alrutz’s book Digital Storytelling, Applied Theatre, & Youth: Performing Possibility, I learned the importance of personal expression through creation. Projects such as our Collision Project and Alrutz’s Performing Justice Project present highly beneficial …

Asexual Dramaturgies: Reading For Asexuality In The Western Theatrical Canon, Anna Maria Ruffino Broussard

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Asexuality has recently gained recognition and visibility as a legitimate sexual orientation and identity standpoint that is usually defined as lacking sexual desire for any gender. Popular culture and the academy have both seen the emergence of a robust conversation about the definition and import of asexuality, recognizing the term as an umbrella concept covering an ever-diversifying array of identities. Within the nascent critical discourse on asexuality, theorists have sought to identify asexuality as a sexual orientation, to rethink our society’s sexual normativity, and to question compulsory sexuality, or the assumption that sexual desire is intrinsic to all people, thus …

The Comedy Of Cancel Culture In A Post-Carlin United States: On The Politics Of Cultural Interpretation, Bryant W. Sculos

Class, Race and Corporate Power

Taking the form of a critical review of the HBO documentary George Carlin's American Dream, this essay explores the character of George Carlin's political and cultural criticism, its implications for contemporary debates about so-called "cancel culture," and the broader political significance of cultural interpretation.

Pride And Prejudice: A Modern, Queer Retelling For The Stage, Kate Isabel Foley

Theater Summer Fellows

In the course of studying LGBTQ topics in a queer drama class, I noticed that there was a glaring omission in our readings: the “B.” However, this lack of bisexual representation wasn’t due to a poor syllabus, but to a dismaying lack of bisexual representation in theatre as a whole. This observation, as well as my own experience as a bisexual woman, motivated me to use my love of writing and theatre to fill the void. After performing in Pride and Prejudice at Ursinus, I knew that Jane Austen’s story was the key to me bringing visibility to an underserved, …

A Morality Play Or Just Simply Queer: Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour, Rebecca Weaver

Theses

Queer theatre during the early 1900s in America seems to be almost non-existent when students study literature, history, and even theatre history because the records were suppressed, leaving the teaching of queer history at a disadvantage. One of the most influential queer plays in theatre history was written in 1934 by Lillian Hellman. The Children’s Hour takes place in an all-girls school ran by Karen Wright and Martha Dobie. The two friends encounter a continuous problem by the name of Mary Tilford – one of the girls who attends the school. In an effort to convince her grandmother to withdraw …

Putting It Together: Best Practices In Arts Education And Theatrical Education With Neurodivergent Students, Evan Tait

Graduate Theses, Action Research Projects, and Professional Projects

Arts education, for many administrations, can be a frustrating course of study. The question of whether or not it is an important skill to have students learn or whether it’s frivolous is a constant argument between administrators and teachers. The best practices for arts education in the classroom can lead to improvements in test scores, development in critical thinking skills, and increases in understanding in many non-arts related subjects. Neurodivergent students rely on arts education because, for many, the way that they understand the world is through artistic practices such as music, theater, visual arts, and literature. Many students rely …

Using Laughter To Inspire Change: Absurdist Theatre In Oppressive Societies, Mia Villeneuve

Honors Theses

The 1959 play Rhinoceros by French playwright Eugène Ionesco is one of many plays considered by Martin Esslin to be a part of "Theatre of the Absurd" a genre of plays written by mostly European playwrights in the late 1950's. These plays typically center around ideas of existentialism, and seem to lack any type of logical consistency. Rhinoceros centers around a small French town in which all the inhabitants slowly turn into rhinoceroses, and was a response to the uprising of fascism in Nazi Germany and a commentary on how social ideas spread.

This thesis will discuss the use of …

The Faustian Deal: What Is Good And Evil?, Jaclyn Elmquist

English Honors Theses

How is the “deal with the devil” is portrayed in contemporary films? This essay compares how the original Faustian deal informs modern-day portrayals. Thus, I examine how devils were first represented in early works such as The Faustbuch, Mary of Nijmegen, and Goethe’s Faustus. These depictions and their historical context provide the basis for my research. I compare these works to the films, Rosemary’s Baby, Wall Street, and Sweet Smell of Sucess. In the mentioned films, the main characters make deals with a devil or demon for wealth, success, or fame. I explore how the Faustian character of each film …

Review Of The The Closet: The Eighteenth-Century Architecture Of Intimacy, By Danielle Bobker, Mary Peace

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

No abstract provided.