Drama

This year’s scholarship explores an unusually broad variety of perspectives on American drama. Studies in diverse fields illuminate hitherto unconsidered aspects of major plays and define new subgroups of material. For example, historical approaches examine 20th-century social activism and political theater, trace the lives of Arab immigrants in the United States, and explore feminism as reflected in changing concepts of rape and views of aging. More surprising, while some of this scholarship uses the play texts simply as evidence of historical movements, often it also evinces insights into the structure of a play as both representing and furthering social context.