This book presents an analysis of the many plays written by women in the American theatre in the first half of the century. Such playwrights as Rachel Crothers, Zona Gale, Susan Glaspell, Edna Ferber, and Lillian Hellman were popular and successful contributors to the stage. Many of their plays won such awards as the Pulitzer Prize, the Drama Critics Circle Award, and Tony Awards. The plays are discussed in terms of their popular and critical value and placed within the historical and social background of the period. In this time of intense change for women in American society, the plays reflect the new demands for freedom, careers, the right to vote, equality with men, and the right to intellectual development. Shafer calls attention to many fine plays which deserve production today.

Women writers have been traditionally excluded from literary canons and not until recently have scholars begun to rediscover or discover for the first time neglected women writers and their works. This reference includes alphabetically arranged entries on 58 American women authors who wrote between 1900 and 1945. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and discusses a particular author's biography, her major works and themes, and the critical response to her writings. The entries close with extensive primary and secondary bibliographies, and the volume concludes with a list of works for further reading. The period surveyed by this reference is rich and diverse. Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance, two major artistic movements, occurred between 1900 and 1945, and the entries included here demonstrate the significant contributions women made to these movements. The volume as a whole strives to reflect the diversity of American culture and includes entries for African American, Native American, Mexican American, and Chinese American women. It includes well known writers such as Willa Cather and Eudora Welty, along with more neglected ones such as Anita Scott Coleman and Sui Sin Far.

This volume addresses the work of women playwrights throughout the history of the American theatre, from the early pioneers to contemporary feminists. Each chapter introduces the reader to the work of one or more playwrights and to a way of thinking about plays. Together they cover significant writers such as Rachel Crothers, Susan Glaspell, Lillian Hellman, Sophie Treadwell, Lorraine Hansberry, Alice Childress, Megan Terry, Ntozake Shange, Adrienne Kennedy, Wendy Wasserstein, Marsha Norman, Beth Henley and Maria Irene Fornes. Playwrights are discussed in the context of topics such as early comedy and melodrama, feminism and realism, the Harlem Renaissance, the feminist resurgence of the 1970s and feminist dramatic theory. A detailed chronology and illustrations enhance the volume, which also includes bibliographical essays on recent criticism and on African-American women playwrights before 1930.

Please note this is a 'Palgrave to Order' title (PTO). Stock of this book requires shipment from an overseas supplier. It will be delivered to you within 12 weeks. This study rediscovers the lives and notable accomplishments of five prominent, yet historically neglected women dramatists of the Progressive Era: Martha Morton, Madeleine Lucette Ryley, Evelyn Greenleaf Sutherland, Beulah Marie Dix, and Rida Johnson Young.

"In this exciting new anthology, Wesley Brown and Aimée K. Michel bring together six wonderfully teachable plays by some of the greatest American women dramatists of the past fifty years-- Ntozake Shange, Suzan-Lori Parks, Paula Vogel, Lynn Nottage, Beth Henley, and Susan Yankowitz. The editors provide a helpful Introduction to the last 100 years of theatrical activity, from suffrage and anti-lynching plays, through the explosive 1960s, to recent Broadway triumphs, highlighting women's struggle-a struggle that continues--to put their vision and voices on the American stage." Elin Diamond, Rutgers University, USA This volume celebrates the iconoclastic power of six American women playwrights who pushed the boundaries of the form outside the box of conventional drama. Each play is accompanied by a short introduction providing the biographical background of the playwright as well as discussing the dramatic style of her writing, the extent to which her work is informed by major playwrights of the period, and how the specific work illustrates the overarching themes of her body of work. The plays included are: Gun by Susan Yankowitz Spell #7: geechee jibara quik magic trance manual for technologically stressed third world people by Ntozake Shange The Jacksonian by Beth Henley The Baltimore Waltz by Paula Vogel In the Blood by Suzan-Lori Parks Intimate Apparel by Lynn Nottage

The first three decades of the twentieth century saw the New Woman writing an astonishing array of dramatic presentations. This checklist, gleaned from hundreds of library collections and out-of-print anthologies, reveals over 12,000 plays by perhaps 2,000 American women. Some of these works are well known, most are not; some are of enduring literary quality, probably most are not; but all are of social significance and serve to document women's history of the period. Included in a broad definition of play, are dramas and comedies, musicals, farces, monologues and dialogues, pageants and masques, stunts and exercises, operas and cantatas. In addition to adult drama, there are numerous plays written for children and for holiday celebrations. A vast amount of dramatic material was written for amateur theatre, school and church productions, and community events. The sheer volume of these mostly unrewarded contributions is noteworthy, and this checklist should be consulted by researchers in women's studies as well as drama. Playwrights include such noted writers as Susan Glaspell and Zora Neale Hurston in addition to many unremembered women, some of whom have entries for scores of plays. The playwrights are listed in alphabetical order with their works following. Information is given on life dates as known, and the playwrights are keyed to inclusion in major biographical reference books if relevant. The type of dramatic presentation and number of acts is indicated, as is production and publication information as available; and, in almost all cases, at least one library or anthology source is given, coded to a list in the front of the book. Appendixes record contributions to several anthologies, and a selected bibliography completes the work.

Offers a collection of classic plays by such women writers as Lillian Hellman, Gertrude Stein, Alice Childress, and Clare Boothe.

Modern Drama by Women 1880s-1930s offers the first direct evidence that women playwrights helped create the movement known as Modern Drama. It contains twelve plays by women from the Americas, Europe and Asia, spanning a national and stylistic range from Swedish realism to Russian symbolism. Six of these plays are appearing in their first English-language translation. Playwrights include: * Anne-Charlotte Leffler Edgren (Sweden) * Amelai Pincherle Rosselli (Italy) * Elsa Berstein (Germany) * Elizabeth Robins (Britain) * Marie Leneru (France) * Alfonsina Storni (Argentina) * Hella Wuolijoki (Finland) * Hasegawa Shigure (Japan) * Rachilde (France) * Zinaida Gippius (Russia) * Djuna Barnes (USA) * Marita Bonner (USA) This groundbreaking anthology explodes the traditional canon. In these plays, the New Woman represents herself and her crises in all of the styles and genres available to the modern dramatist. Unprecedented in diversity and scope, it is a collection which no scholar, student or lover of modern drama can afford to miss.

American women novelists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries registered a call for a new sexual freedom, Dale Bauer contends. By creating a lexicon of "sex expression," many authors explored sexuality as part of a discourse about women's needs rather than confining it to the realm of sentiments, where it had been relegated (if broached at all) by earlier writers. This new rhetoric of sexuality enabled critical conversations about who had sex, when in life they had it, and how it signified. Whether liberating or repressive, sexuality became a potential force for female agency in these women's novels, Bauer explains, insofar as these novelists seized the power of rhetoric to establish their intellectual authority. Thus, Bauer argues, they helped transform the traditional ideal of sexual purity into a new goal of sexual pleasure, defining in their fiction what intimacy between equals might become. Analyzing the work of canonical as well as popular writers--including Edith Wharton, Anzia Yezierska, Julia Peterkin, and Fannie Hurst, among others--Bauer demonstrates that the new sexualization of American culture was both material and rhetorical.

The 50-year period from 1880 to 1929 is the richest era for theater in American history, certainly in the great number of plays produced and artists who contributed significantly, but also in the centrality of theater in the lives of Americans. As the impact of European modernism began to gradually seep into American theater during the 1880s and quite importantly in the 1890s, more traditional forms of theater gave way to futurism, symbolism, surrealism, and expressionism. American playwrights like Eugene O'Neill, George Kelly, Elmer Rice, Philip Barry, and George S. Kaufman ushered in the Golden Age of American drama. The A to Z of American Theater: Modernism focuses on legitimate drama, both as influenced by European modernism and as impacted by the popular entertainment that also enlivened the era. This is accomplished through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced entries on plays; music; playwrights; great performers like Maude Adams, Otis Skinner, Julia Marlowe, and E.H. Sothern; producers like David Belasco, Daniel Frohman, and Florenz Ziegfeld; critics; architects; designers; and costumes.