New Readings in American Drama

Contents: Deborah R. Geis: Staging Hypereloquence: Edward Albee and the Monologic Voice - Marcia Noe: Reconfiguring the Subject/Recuperating Realism: Susan Glaspell's Unseen Woman - Jennifer Gillan: Staging a Staged Crisis in Masculinity: Race and Masculinity in Six Degrees of Separation - John Gruesser: Lies That Kill: Lorraine Hansberry's Answer to Heart of Darkness in Les Blancs - Penny Farfan: From Birth and After Birth to One Shoe Off: Tina Howe and the Uses of Feminism - Jeff Johnson: Gendermandering: Stereotyping and Gender Role Reversal in the Major Plays of William Inge - James Hurt: Arthur Kopit's Wings and the Languages of the Theater - Janet V. Haedicke: Decoding Cipher Space: David Mamet's The Cryptogram and America's Dramatic Legacy - Granger Babcock: «What's the Secret?»: Willy Loman as Desiring Machine - Albert Wertheim: Hollywood's Moral Landscape: Clifford Odets's The Big Knife - Philip J. Hanson: The Emperor Jones: Naturalistic Tragedy in Hemispheric Perspective - David Radavich: Collapsing Male Myths: Rabe's Tragicomic Hurlyburly - Barry Witham: Between Two Worlds: Elmer Rice Chairs the Thirties Debate - Gaylord Brewer: He's Still Falling: Wallace Shawn's Problem of Morality - Nancy L. Nester: The Agoraphobic Imagination: The Protagonist Who Murders and the Critics Who Praise Her - Gene A. Plunka: McLuhan, Perfect People, and the Media Plays of Jean-Claude van Italie - Verena Foster: Desire, Death and Laughter: Tragicomic Dramaturgy in A Streetcar Named Desire - Harry J. Elam, Jr.: Ma Rainey's Black Bottom: Singing Wilson's Blues - Marc Silverstein: «Any Baggage You Don't Claim, We Trash»: Living With(in) History in Wolfe's The Colored Museum.

The Editor: Norma Jenckes is Associate Professor of Dramatic Literature and Playwriting at the University of Cincinnati and received her Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Illinois-Urbana. A poet and playwright, she is the founding editor of the scholarly journal, American Drama, and has published on Bernard Shaw, Eugene O¿Neill, Clifford Odets, John Howard Lawson, Canadian theater, Irish poetry and drama. She also edited a holograph facsimile edition of Bernard Shaw¿s Arms and the Man.

«Founded in 1990, 'American Drama' has consistently attracted innovative and critically astute writings on American plays and playwrights, as this superb sampling, gleaned from the journal's first decade, so amply illustrates. The nineteen essays included in this thought-provoking book illuminate the work of twenty playwrights, from Edward Albee to George Wolfe, and represent cutting-edge analyses by authors both established and emerging. Under the masterful editorial supervision of Norma Jenckes, this book will be welcomed by students and scholars alike and will enhance 'American Drama's' reputation as the preeminent serial in the field dedicated to American dramatic literature and the application of various theoretical methodologies and analytical tools in the exploration of the play text. New Readings in 'American Drama' can stand on its own as a testament to the breadth of our drama, offering the reader a feast of ideas and insights by first-rate critics. It is a stunning addition to the critical literature on American drama.» (Don B. Wilmeth, Asa Messer Professor, Brown University)
«A decade ago, 'American Drama' set itself to address the relative disregard for American drama in academe and to provide a forum for the best of dramatic criticism. The evidence for its success is stamped on every page of this book, which not only re-maps that theatre, but brings to bear a whole spectrum of critical approaches in essays that are as perceptive as they are wide ranging.» (C. W. E. Bigsby, Director of the Arthur Miller Centre and Professor of American Literature, University of East Anglia)