Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction - Jeffrey H. Richards

1 Theatre Companies before the Revolution - Odai Johnson
2 Revolutionary American Drama and Theater - Jason Shaffer
3 Early Republican Drama - Jeffrey H. Richards
4 The Politics of Antebellum Melodrama - Scott C. Martin
5 Minstrelsy and Uncle Tom - Sarah Meer
6 Representing Ethnic Identity on the Antebellum Stage, 1825-1861 - Heather S. Nathans
7 Antebellum Plays by Women: Contexts and Themes - Amelia Howe Kritzer
8 Reform Drama - Mark Mullen
9 Antebellum Frontier and Urban Plays, 1825-1860 - Rosemarie Bank
10 Late Melodrama - Mark Hodin
11 A New Realism - Mark Fearnow
12 American Musical Theatre, 1870 to 1945 - Thomas S. Hischak
13 The New Woman, the Suffragist, and the Stage - Katherine E. Kelly
14 The Rise of African American Drama, 1822-1879 - Marvin McAllister
15 The Provincetown Players in American Culture - Brenda Murphy
16 Eugene O'Neill - Steven F. Bloom
17 Naturalism and Expressionism in American Drama - Julia A. Walker
18 American Political Drama, 1910-1945 - Christopher J. Herr
19 Federal Theatre Project - Barry B. Witham
20 African American Drama, 1910-1945 - Kathy A. Perkins
21 Arthur Miller: A Radical Politics of the Soul - Jeffrey D. Mason
22 Tennessee Williams and the Winemiller Inheritance - Stephen Bottoms
23 Experimental Theatre: Beyond Illusion - Theodore Shank
24 Post-World War II African American Theater - Harry J. Elam, Jr.
25 The Postwar Musical - Michelle Dvoskin
26 Postwar Protest Plays - S. E. Wilmer
27 Feminist Drama - Dorothy Chansky
28 Drama and Technology - Roger Bechtel
29 Drama and the New Sexualities - Jordan Schildcrout
30 Political Drama - Stephen Watt
31 Ethnicity and Postwar Drama - Jon D. Rossini
32 Running Lines: Narratives of Twenty-First-Century American Theater - Marc Robinson

About the Author

Jeffrey H. Richards was Eminent Professor of Literature at Old Dominion University. He was the author of Drama Theater, and Identity in the American New Republic and the editor of Early Plays: Eugene O'Neill and Early American Drama (Penguin; 2001, 1997).

Heather S. Nathans is Professor of Theatre at the University of Maryland and the new President of the American Society for Theatre Research.

Reviews

"This reviewer would recommend this handbook for any graduate dramatic literature or theatre history course; each essay displays a firm grasp of the era or subject for which it was written. It is best used in conjunction with the reading of a play or the writing of a paper concerning a particular aspect of American dramatic literature rather than as a resource substituting the reading, viewing, or staging of a play." --Rodney Donahue, Journal of American
Culture
"There are more than a few 'handbooks,' 'guidebooks,' or 'companions to' out there, but The Oxford Handbook of American Drama is uncommon in its thorough and wide-ranging presentation of multiple topics.... Most impressive are the ways in which the book merges the familiar with the more shadowed corners of the American canon, and, in most cases, individual topics are each engagingly unpacked by a major scholar specializing in a particular subject....
The often astonishing, politically and emotionally wrenching, and riotously entertaining theatrical heritage of the United States is fully present here in chapters immersing the reader in the work of diverse
artists, companies, historical issues, and recurring themes emerging from 350-plus years of the nation's still comparatively young existence." --Journal of Dramatic Theory & Criticism
"Lead editor Jeffrey H. Richards, along with coeditor Heather S. Nathans, who completed the book after Richards's death...are among the leading scholars of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American stage, with a strong interest in surveying the rich and complex dramatic landscape before the modernist era.... [A]conspicuous feature of this collection is its thematic interconnections, with several key topics and issues treated in multiple essays spanning
different historical periods." --Eugene O'Neill Review
"The Oxford Handbook of American Drama gathers short, evocative essays by well-known scholars into a comprehensive overview of the field.... Short, tightly focused essays balance the need for clear outlines and introductions with creative and probing forays into the field's central questions. Up-to-date citations and generous lists of sources ably guide scholars toward materials for further research. In short, it is-as one would expect from a major
press-a well-conceived and executed handbook, a useful starting place for scholars new to the field and a valuable tool for those wishing to revisit the field's central ongoing discussions." --Early American
Literature