Book Talk: Jim Wilson's "Failure, Fascism, and Teachers in American Theatre"

US THEATRE / BOOK CELEBRATION

Failure, Fascism, and Teachers in American Theatre

Pedagogy of the Oppressors

by James F. Wilson

LIVE / IN PERSON: Segal Theatre, 365 Fifth Ave @ 34 Str..

LIVE STREAM ON HOWLROUND

Monday, Nov. 13

7:30 pm

" With fascinating, rich examples from plays inside and outside the canon, Wilson demonstrates how the character of the beloved or bedeviled pedagogue bears the weight of cultural ambivalence about not just education but also about power and influence, identity and social expectation." -- Jill Dolan

Join us for an evening with Jim Wilson and Jordan Schildcrout discussing Wilson's latest book Failure, Fascism, and Teachers in American Theatre: Pedagogy of the Oppressors. This timely and accessible book explores the shifting representations of schoolteachers and professors in plays and performances primarily from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in the United States. Examining various historical and recurring types, such as spinsters, schoolmarms, presumed sexual deviants, radicals and communists, fascists, and emasculated men teachers, Wilson shines the spotlight on both well-known and nearly-forgotten plays. Richly illustrated, the book will appeal to theatre scholars and general readers as it delves into plays and performances that reflect cultural fears, desires, and fetishistic fantasies associated with educators--while providing meaningful opportunities for intervention in the ongoing education wars. Moderated by Frank Hentschker.

James F. Wilson is the Executive Officer of the Theatre and Performance Program at the Graduate Center, CUNY. His work has appeared in several chapter anthologies and academic journals, and he is the author of Bulldaggers, Pansies, and Chocolate Babies: Race, Performance, and Sexuality in the Harlem Renaissance (UP Michigan).

Jordan Schildcrout  is Professor of Theatre & Performance at Purchase College - SUNY and the author of In the Long Run: A Cultural History of Broadway’s Hit Plays (Routledge) and Murder Most Queer: The Homicidal Homosexual in the American Theater (Michigan). He is also the co-editor of 50 Key Figures in Queer US Theatre, (Routledge), and his newest article Sondheim at the Disco will appear in the next issue of Studies in Musical Theatre.

Failure, Fascism, and Teachers in American Theatre: Pedagogy of the Oppressors is part of the PALGRAVE STUDIES IN THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE HISTORY series. Order it here: https://mitpressbookstore.mit.edu/book/9783031340123