Overview

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. The analysis draws on a range of scholars from cultural and gender studies, queer theory, and critical race discourses to consider teacher characters within notable education movements and periods of political upheaval. 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. In the process, the scrutiny on the array of characters may help illuminate current attacks on real-life teachers while providing meaningful opportunities for intervention in the ongoing education wars. Finalist for the 2023 Freedley Award

Full Product Details

9783031340123

Table of Contents

Reviews

“Rarely do publications engage the roles of theatre scholar, historian, educator, and practitioner with so balanced an approach as does James F. Wilson’s Failure, Fascism, and Teachers in the American Theatre: Pedagogy of the Oppressors … . Educators and practitioners alike have much to learn from studying these plays … . This book smartly and effectively challenges theatremakers to think critically … and to create more honest, nuanced depictions of teachers that better represent their essential place in society.” (Collin Vorbeck, Theatre Topics, Vol. 34 (3), November, 2024) 

Author Information

James F. Wilson is the Executive Officer of the Theatre and Performance Program at the Graduate Center, CUNY, USA. 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 (2010). 

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