Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory Commons^™

Time, Place, & Purpose: The Performance Of Creole Identity In Louisiana, Rachel N. Aker

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Though much of the early development of Louisiana Creole culture can be found in New Orleans, the culture spread and continued to grow throughout the rest of South Louisiana in both similar and different ways. Expanding beyond Joseph Roach’s treatment of Creole cultural performances in New Orleans in Cities of the Dead (1996) and journeying across land and water, this project identifies more Creole cultural performance as they emerge across place and time. I present Louisiana and the Gulf South as a kind of inland archipelago, with the currents of culture-creation moving in and around distinct community enclaves. The flow …

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 …

Precarious Democracy: "It Can't Happen Here" As The Federal Theatre's Site Of Mass Resistance, Macy Donyce Jones

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The scholarly consensus of the Federal Theatre Project (FTP) is that it was a massive undertaking set to employ theatre professionals during the Great Depression. That undertaking resulted in vibrant, relevant theatre that helped to build a theatre audience across the nation. Outside of the overview-style scholarship, specialized studies have delved into the FTP as a community-building enterprise, a site of racial/ethnic study, and an essential new play creator.

My scholarship fills a hole that previous FTP scholarship has left open. The FTP was a political machine engaged in producing pro-American propaganda. That aspect of production has been largely left …