Hi again, Alison,
I quite agree with all you've said, especially with what you've said
about the interdisciplinary possibilities inherent in teaching drama.
In an academic world increasingly carved into smaller & smaller boxes,
interdisciplinarity tends to disappear to the detriment of each
discipline & of the students.
It's rather ironic that most post-colonial cultures find the
establishment of a national theatre essential & that the task of
developing one is most often undertaken by a nation's leading poets
(I'm thinking here of Yeats, the Nigerian Wole Soyinka, and the
African-American LeRoy Jones [aka Amiri Baraka]), yet the academic
establishment which reveres them as poets frequently ignores their
drama. I once wrote an article about one of Baraka's plays as a
response to Yeats, but it was published in a text on intertextuality
in global literature and thus escaped just about everyone's notice. I
was speaking to a colleague in African-American studies about the
play, which she disparaged until I started talking about the Yeats
connection; then she was fascinated. The problem is that those who
know Baraka are unlikely to know Yeats & vice versa. It's not just
interdisciplinarity that is being lost.
One of the most fascinating teaching experiences I've ever had was
co-teaching a modern drama course with a woman from the drama
department (who also did a fabulous job of playing McGuinness' BAGLADY
for a conference I hosted). That, however, was at another university;
I couldn't arrange anything like that at my current university because
of budgetary issues (English is in the Faculty of Arts & Sciences, &
Drama is in the Faculty of Fine Arts, so which faculty would pay for
what, how such a course would count for our respective teaching loads,
& which faculty would get the tuition revenues would all be
potentially contentious).
Is there, do you know, an e-list for drama scholars? If not, there
should be. I hope that you & I are not talking just to one another
but that some of our colleagues on the Women's list will also take
note.
I, too, enjoyed our meeting in Liverpool. All I can do is hope I win
th lottery.
All the best,
Maureen
> Hi Maureen,
>
> I tend to agree with you on this. I think in some institutions there is a
> hierarchy of genre that, sadly places Drama at the bottom of the pile, yet
> when students are actually encouraged, and brought into the frame they
> actually love the subject. My Contemporary Irish Drama course is always
> extremely highly attended, and it's something that students can get
> passionate about. I also agree about the different methods of teaching
> having taught in Performing Arts departments also, [am currently programme
> leader for English and Drama]! I spent a lot of time discussing how
> Artaud, or Grotowski or Brook would do, and rather less analysing text!
> This is not to impugn Performing Arts departments, or indeed to generalise
> about them. I just make the point that while most of us teach Shakespeare,
> (and how many as dramatist, as opposed to bard)? it is more difficult to
> get other, less canonical courses on to the timetable, and that it would
> be helpful to teach text, context and performance across the timetable.
> Drama, I think is an excellent vehicle for teaching applied theory,
> anthropology, linguistics, philosophy, politics...the list goes on.
>
> I really enjoyed talking to you at Liverpool, Maureen, and I hope you have
> a windfall allowing you to come to Sunderland
> Slainte
> Alison
>
> Maureen Hawkins <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> Hi Alison,
>
> I agree with you about the good audiences for Friel, but one thing I
> noticed in Liverpool & Galway last year was that though they had good
> audiences, there were fewer panels on drama than had been usual in the
> past.
>
> I don't know if this is the case in Ireland, the UK, and Europe in
> general, but in North America it appears that postgraduate studies have
> shifted away from a focus on genre to one on period--but "period" seems to
> focus on prose (whether fiction or not) & poetry. The result is that
> there are fewer and fewer young faculty who even think of including plays
> in their courses and, therefore, a declining focus in academia on drama.
>
> In fact, as long as 15 years ago, I considered applying for a job in
> po-co studies that seemed from the ad to be focused on the novel, so I
> called to ask if they were interested in other genres. When I replied
> "drama" when asked what genre, I was told, "Oh no, we teach only serious
> literature here." About the same time, I got a 1-year lectureship in
> "Politics and Literature" in spite of the fact that the ad seemed most
> focused on medieval lit. When I asked why, I was told that my application
> made them realize that they were not & had not for several years offered
> any undergraduate or postgraduate courses in drama other than Shakespeare.
> Both universities were major research institutions. Nor has the
> situation improved. My department recently hired a Canadianist who, when
> asked to teach our course in Canadian drama, responded, "but I was hired
> to teach
> Canadian literature!"
>
> Of course, all this leads to fewer and fewer young faculty and
> students who have/learn the reading skills necessary to read a play
> (i.e., consider the interpretational implications of performance
> elements indicated in the text in both stage directions and lines).
> In 20th & 21st century drama, I find that plays "say" increasingly
> more & more via performance elements; a study of dialogue alone often
> leaves the reader clueless. This leads to a further decline in the
> teaching of dramatic literature (except, of course, in drama
> departments, which teach it in a far different way); this is often
> excused on the grounds that "there are no good (American, Canadian,
> contemporary, fill in the blank) plays"--a reaction that I think has
> much to do with the speaker's inability to read a play in the ways
> mentioned above.
>
> This is further compounded by the fact that few drama departments focus
> on dramatic literature in the way an English department would; their focus
> (at least in North America) is usually more on the practical (often purely
> material) aspects of staging a play, not on what it is "saying." This
> leads to abominations such as an expensive professional production of THE
> PLOUGH AND THE STARS I once saw which cut the last scene of the Tommies
> drinking tea & singing "Keep the Home Fires Burning." I later had an
> opportunity to ask the director why he had cut the scene. He replied,
> "Well, you can't do a play just the way everyone else has." I pressed him
> a bit & soon realized that he hadn't a clue as to why the scene was there.
>
> I realize that this is not strictly a "woman's" issue, but it is one
> that should be important to everyone on the list who teaches literature
> and perhaps especially to those who teach literature. Now that women have
> finally broken into the male-dominated world of the theatre, it is
> especially dangerous to marginalize the genre. In general (at least in
> the 20th & 21st centuries), poetry and prose privilege the individual: an
> individual voice speaks to an individual ear--only relatively rarely do we
> have the opportunity to attend poetry or prose readings. This endorses
> our period's privileging of the individual over the community and the
> subjective over the political. Drama is the only genre which is innately
> "political." It is meant to be enacted by a group for a group and usually
> deals in some way with the doings of the "polis"--particularly with power
> relations within the community--an area which is of major concern for
> women. The marginalizing of drama marginalizes "issues"--including
> women's issues, which remain important even in the world of relatively
> individualized and subjective Third Wave feminism.
>
> I suspect that part of Friel's appeal lies in the fact that, though
> his plays tend to use a single performance element in an innovative way,
> they are dominantly realistic and dialogue-oriented and thus accessible to
> the majority of readers and directors. For example, to stay within the
> sphere of male playwrights, McGuinness, who uses performance elements &
> anti-realistic techniques far more than Friel, receives far less
> attention--when's the last time you heard a paper on MARY AND LIZZIE or
> even on CARTHAGINIANS?
>
> What I fear is that your "utopian vision" that your student who is
> working on Reid, Carr and Devlin will get equal interest with those
> working on Friel & other male playwrights (other than Shakespeare) may
> come horribly true--in that dramatists, whether male or female, will
> get little interest. The decline in the study of dramatic literature
> is, in terms of "women's issues," I think, important to us all.
>
> Sorry, all, for polemicizing--I guess I just can't resist the lectern
> or the soap-box.
>
> I wish I could make it to the conference--there I could speak about a
> woman dramatist to a good-sized audience--but finances, I fear, make
> it impossible. I wish you all the luck (even though my face is
> turning a bit green with envy); I know it will be a great conference.
>
>
> Maureen Hawkins
> Department of English
> University of Lethbridge
> Lethbridge, Alberta
> T1K 3M4
> Canada.
>
>
>
>
> Deidre,
>> It's a troubling situation. I do hope you do come along, particularly as
> I
>> have a new Ph.D student who is working on Irish Women playwrights,and
> I'd
>> like to get the experience of othe women working on women's writing. As
> you know, much of the work I do is on Friel and performance
> anthropology.
>> Papers on Friel [like Heaney] are always well-attended. My utopian
> vision
>> is that one day, my student who is working on Reid, Carr and Devlin will
> get equal interest. As Boland says, woman is not poet by poetry, perhaps
> the same extends across the whole canon of Irish Women's writing.
> Bernard was a contemporary of Catherine. He read at the first conference
> with McGuckian. We are hoping for Ciaron Carson and Luke Gibbons
> too...and, in particular some of our friend from WOIRN.
>> Slan go foill
>> Alison
>>
>> O'Byrne Deirdre wrote:
>> Alison
>> Yes, I'll be there! I really enjoyed last year's, and I'm delighted to
> see
>> that Catherine Byron is doing a reading as I know her and her work well.
> I've never heard B Donoghue and am looking forward to that too.
>> It wasn't by any means meant as a criticism of you or the other
> organisers
>> that the audience for Irish women writer panels is small - similar
> happens
>> at all Irish Studies conferences in my experience. The agenda still
> seems
>> to be pretty masculinist even after all these years. We were discussing
> that in Liverpool at the ACIS conference. That conference was so huge
> that
>> the smaller audiences for women's panels wasn't particularly noticeable
> unless you were watching out for it, which I admit I was. The male
> presence was particularly tiny at those panels.
>> Still, we keep battling in there, though I have been doing more papers
> lately that include men's writing as well. That is partly because I
> teach
>> both, but there is a small element of hope too that I might actually get
> someone along to listen. Sometimes though I wonder why we are still
> coming up against what someone whose name I've shamefully forgotten
> described as the 'ampersand' problem in relation to black women's
> writing.
>> The point she made was that Women's Studies don't include black women,
> and
>> Black Studies don't include women. Things have certainly changed in that
> area (I think), but in 1989 or thereabouts I remember writing an essay
> on
>> how that is paralleled in the case of Irish women: Women's Studies
> courses
>> don't include them, and Irish Studies courses are male-dominated. I
> would
>> like to think that we have made inroads since then, but whenever I give
> a
>> paper where there are more people on the panel than in the audience I
> have
>> my doubts.
>> Maybe I should be giving a paper on that! (but who would be listening??)
> Deirdre
>>
>> Alison Younger wrote:
>> Deirdre,
>> I'm really glad you responded to this. Whether it's been under
> publicised
>> in this area I'm not sure, but as you'll know from years one to two,the
> conference is growing in size and status without a commnesurate growth
> in
>> women's writing and women's history panels. I, like you would love to
> see
>> this remedied.
>> I hope to see you there this year
>> Slainte
>> Ax
>>
>> O'Byrne Deirdre wrote:
>> I couldn't agree more, especially as I have presented and attended
> papers
>> on Irish women's writing for the past two years to a very tiny audience.
> I
>> know I'm not a Big Name or anything, but I wonder about the apparent
> lack
>> of interest in women's writing indicated by the small numbers attending
> these panels and discussions.
>> Deirdre O'Byrne
>>
>> Alison Younger wrote:
>> Dear All,
>> would it be possible to post these conference details on the network? It
> would be great to see some panels on Gender or Women's Studies
>> Slan go foill
>> Alison O'Malley-Younger
>>
>> CALL FOR PAPERS
>>
>> The University of Sunderland
>> Third Annual Irish Studies Conference
>> (incorporating the inaugural North East of England Celtic Studies
> Symposium)
>> 11-13 November 2005
>> Word, The Icon and The Ritual [ii] - Lands of Saints and Scholars
>>
>> Following the success of its last two international conferences:
> Representing-Ireland: Past, Present and Future, [2003] and The Word, The
> Icon and The Ritual, [2004] the University of Sunderland is soliciting
> papers for an interdisciplinary conference, which will run from 11-13
> November 2005. This year we are also delighted to welcome proposals from
> scholars working within the broader field of Celtic Studies.
>> The conference organisers hope to represent a wide range of
>> approaches to Irish and Celtic culture from academics and
>> non--academics alike. Performances, roundtables, collaborative
>> projects, and other non--traditional presentations are
>> encouraged in addition to conference papers. As with last
>> year’s conference, we welcome submissions for panels and papers
>> under the thematic headings of: The Word, The Icon, The Ritual
>> in the following areas: Literature, Performing Arts, History,
>> Politics, Folklore and Mythology, Ireland in Theory,
>> Anthropology, Sociology, Art and Art History, Music, Dance,
>> Media and Film Studies, Cultural Studies,Gender Studies and
>> Studies of the Diaspora. North American and other international
>> scholars, practitioners in the arts, and postgraduate students
>> are all encouraged to submit proposals to the conference
>> organisers. We also welcome proposals for papers in absentia
>> for d! elegates who wish to participate but may find it
>> difficult to attend the event.
>> The last two conferences have resulted in the publication of a selection
> of essays, and we hope to continue this with essays from this year’s
> conference.
>> Readings
>> Bernard O’Donoghue
>> Catherine Byron
>> Plenary Speakers Include:
>> Professor Robert Welch – University of Ulster
>> Professor Michael O’Neill – University of Durham
>> Professor Werner Huber, University of Chemnitz, Germany
>> Dr Kevin Barry, UEI Galway
>>
>> Organisers:
>> English/Literary Studies: Dr Alison O'Malley-Younger, (Sunderland),
> Professor Stephen Regan, (Durham)
>> Media and Cultural Studies: Professor John Storey (Sunderland)
>> History/Diaspora/Celtic Studies: Dr Richard Allen,(Sunderland)
>> Proposals of not more than 500 words should be sent by 20th June 2005 at
> the latest to either:
>> [log in to unmask]
>> [log in to unmask]
>> [log in to unmask]
>> [log in to unmask]
>> And copied to the Conference Adminstrator
>> Susan Cottam – [log in to unmask]
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Slan agus beannacht
>>
>> Alison O'Malley-Younger [Dr]
>> Department of English
>> University of Sunderland
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ---------------------------------
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>> Slan agus beannacht
>>
>> Alison O'Malley-Younger [Dr]
>> Department of English
>> University of Sunderland
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ---------------------------------
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>> Slan agus beannacht
>>
>> Alison O'Malley-Younger [Dr]
>> Department of English
>> University of Sunderland
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ---------------------------------
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>
> Slan agus beannacht
>
> Alison O'Malley-Younger [Dr]
> Department of English
> University of Sunderland
>
>
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
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