Theatre Journal

Join the team at Theatre Journal! We are seeking two new colleagues, an Online Editor and a Performance Review Editor. Please share widely and consider applying! Don't hesitate to reach out with questions.

And last but certainly not least, congrats to Donatella Gallella for receiving the Methuen Drama Prize for Best Essay on the Musical from ISSM for her essay “Democracy, ‘Democracy (Reprise),’ and the Asian American Ambivalence of Soft Power" (March 2024).
Hooray for our authors!

More congratulations go to Shannon Woods, who received the Gertrude Lippincott Award from the Dance Studies Association for her essay “The Threat is Now: Choreography, Temporality, and the Active Shooter Drill,” also published in the special issue on Abolition.

Congrats also to Leticia L. Ridley, who received the Vera Mowry Roberts Award Honorable Mention for “A Grammar of Abolition: Black Theatrical Geographies,” which appeared in the special issue on Abolition (September 2024).

Congrats to Maria Di Simone for winning the ATDS Vera Mowry Roberts Award for “Chinese American Identity, Performance, and Immigration Law: Jue Quon Tai in Theatres and at National Borders,” which appeared in the March 2024 issue.

More prizes for TJ authors! Please read and cite these four wonderful articles!

ATHE 2025 Outstanding Article Awardees - Association for Theatre in Higher Education ATHE’s Award for Outstanding Article in a journal acknowledges scholarship marked by methodological sophistication, complex and critical engagement with dramatic texts and performances, focused inquiries, and possible directions for future scholarship.

Congrats to Rhaisa Williams for ATHE's Outstanding Article prize for “Grief Capital, Grief Activism: The Brief Life of Mamie Till Bradley's NAACP Tour" (TJ, Dec '24)! Online editor Tarryn Li-Min Chun and Assoc Editor Bethany Hughes also received accolades. Congrats, all!
www.athe.org/page/article...

Read @pmckelveyphd.bsky.social's "'Honest Work Done by Honest Dogs': Canine Unemployment, Interspecies Rehabilitation, and Disability Performance"

Now available in the new issue of @theatrejournal.bsky.social via @projectmuse.bsky.social

muse.jhu.edu/article/962833

As an accompaniment to my recent essay on Alice Childress and "Trouble in Mind," I wrote a blog post on Theatre Journal online that discusses some of its inner workings.

In particular, I examine the prevailing narrative about this play in juxtaposition to its (very small!) visual archive.

Cover image features Morris Frank and his companion Buddy preparing to cross the street in New York while a small crowd observes, ca 1930s, as part of a publicity campaign of The Seeing Eye, a US organization that systematized efforts to train guide dogs for the blind.

For your summer reading . . . TJ's June issue is out! Articles by Patrick McKelvey, Rebecca Chaleff, Shea Hwang, and Kellen Hoxworth speak collectively to the intricacies of minoritarian worldmaking. Print issue: muse.jhu.edu/issue/55030
Open access content: www.jhuptheatre.org/.../volume-7...

Theatre Journal seeks submissions for its 2026 special issues on "Institutionality" (edited by incoming editor Ariel Nereson) and "Staying Put" (edited by incoming coeditor Christina Baker). Ariel and Christina welcome your inquiries! www.jhuptheatre.org/theatre-jour...

Theatre Journal Editor - Association for Theatre in Higher Education © 2025 Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE). All rights reserved. P.O. Box 922 | Santa Cruz, CA 95061 | Phone: 628.222.4088

Thrilled to share the official ATHE announcement that Christina Baker has been appointed the incoming coeditor of Theatre Journal! Welcome, Christina! www.athe.org/news/700764/...

Megan Lewis has reviewed Transoceanic Blackface in Theatre Journal. She writes: “[Hoxworth’s] degree of detail and excellent footnotes are models of historical performance research.”

TJ's March issue is out! Essays by Rüstem Ertuğ Altınay, Ivan Bujan, Carla Neuss, and Marlis Schweitzer, plus a special online section on the work of Jill Dolan. Online content: www.jhuptheatre.org/theatre-journal/online-content/issue/volume-77-issue-1-march-2025, full issue muse.jhu.edu/issue/54598

My review of State of the Arts by Jonas Tinius is out in Theatre Journal: muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl.... Tinius offers an example of how theatre can be studied anthropologically.

論文　トルコ独立戦争期の少年劇団における軍国主義とトルコ化（キャーズム・カラベキルの試み）
Rüstem Ertuğ Altınay. "Remembering the Army of Robust Children in the Age of the Utopian Turn: Militarism and Turkification in Late Ottoman Youth Theatre." Theatre Journal 77, no. 1, March 2025. otmn
muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...

Delighted to see Rhaisa Williams's recent TJ essay, "Grief Capital, Grief Activism: The Brief Life of Mamie Till Bradley's NAACP Tours," already attracting attention!

TJ's special issue on Care, Carework, and Performance is out! Essays by Rhaisa Williams, Bethany Hughes, Alisha Ibkar, Irvin Manuel Gonzalez, Sung-Min Kim, and Elizabeth Son. Visit www.jhuptheatre.org/.../volume-7.... for interviews, a manifesto, and more! Entire issue at muse.jhu.edu/issue/54175

Call for new Coeditor of THEATRE JOURNAL - Association for Theatre in Higher Education We are soliciting applications to fill a position to join the leadership teams of ATHE’s peer-reviewed journal, Theatre Journal. Apply by January 17, 2025.ATHE’s journals advance the association’s mission, credentials, and prominence in higher education in addition to promoting theatre studies scholarship to an international readership. The calls, posted below, provide information about the editors’ job responsibilities and details for submitting.Potential applicants should address their qualifications for filling these responsibilities and contributing to ATHE’s commitment to become an anti-racist organization. Those with questions about the positions and work involved are encouraged to contact the current editors; for general questions about the application process, contact the Vice President for Research and Publications, Kristin Leahey.

Ten days left to apply to becoming Theatre Journal's next coeditor! Don't hesitate to reach out with questions, large or small www.athe.org/news/688552/...

Call for new Coeditor of THEATRE JOURNAL - Association for Theatre in Higher Education We are soliciting applications to fill a position to join the leadership teams of ATHE’s peer-reviewed journal, Theatre Journal. Apply by January 17, 2025.ATHE’s journals advance the association’s mission, credentials, and prominence in higher education in addition to promoting theatre studies scholarship to an international readership. The calls, posted below, provide information about the editors’ job responsibilities and details for submitting.Potential applicants should address their qualifications for filling these responsibilities and contributing to ATHE’s commitment to become an anti-racist organization. Those with questions about the positions and work involved are encouraged to contact the current editors; for general questions about the application process, contact the Vice President for Research and Publications, Kristin Leahey.

Apply to be a coeditor of Theatre Journal! Applications due January 17 www.athe.org/news/688552/...

I saw two challenging plays that I couldn't get out of my head and I knew I had to write about them. The resulting article just came out in the latest Theatre Journal:

muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...

TJ's special issue of “Abolition and Performance” is now out! Edited by Ariel Nereson, it features six powerful essays and a wealth of online content curated by Tarryn Li-Min Chun. Full issue at muse-jhu-edu.dartmouth.idm.oclc.org/issue/53728; online content at www.jhuptheatre.org/theatre-jour....

Thrilled that my monograph, Latinx Shakespeares: Staging US Intracultural Theater, was reviewed by Guillermo Avilés-Rodríguez for @theatrejournal.bsky.social. My book is open-access and free to download. #theatre #theatresky #academicsky #TheatreBSKY
muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...

A screenshot of Leticia Ridley’s article “A Grammar of Abolition: Black Theatrical Geographies.”

NEW PUBLICATION ALERT! Please read and check out my new article in Theatre Journal, whereby I put forth my concept of Black theatrical geographies in conversation with Katherine McKittrick and Ruth Wilson Gilmore.

DM if you don’t have access and would like me to email you a copy!

Check out the special issue of Theatre Journal on Abolition & Performance. My article “Abolitionist Laughter: The Joint Movement to #stopcopcity” examines the use of humor in the June 5 2023 ATL city council meeting as an ecocritical strategy of refusal and repair
muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...