English 234 - American Drama, 1787-present

This course offers a broad survey of American drama in the context of performance traditions such as minstrelsy, melodrama, realism, the Broadway musical, and the avant-garde. We read works that challenge and expand concepts of national identity and their connection to discourses of race, class, ethnicity, and gender. How do the characters and landscapes of these plays reflect historical events and theatrical inventions? What do they tell us about what it means to be an "American," and how have our answers changed over time? Playwrights will include Tyler, Baker, Aiken, Brown, Boucicault, O'Neill, Stein, Hurston, Treadwell, Wilder, Williams, Miller, Shepard, Kennedy, Wilson, Mamet, Hwang, Kushner, Parks, Ruhl, and Jacobs-Jenkins.