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By Harvey Young
- Joseph Roach
More than four years ago, I interviewed performance studies scholar Joseph Roach as part of the ATHENews “Scholar Spotlight” series aimed at offering insight into the behind-the-scenes thinking of the field’s most prominent professors. In the course of our conversation, the author of Cities of the Dead among other influential works expressed his desire for Yale’s (then) new World Performance Project programming initiative and research cluster to result in the production and publication of coauthored essays: “I want to convince journals that the way of the future in performance studies is multiply signed articles so that everyone working on the performance is credited for their work in the production.” When I asked Joe why the field, our field, seemed so resistant to the practice of co-authorship, he replied, we have “an imaginary relationship to our actual conditions of work.” In this brief essay, I echo Roach’s call for the widespread acceptance and adoption of “multiply signed” essays, articles, chapters, and books within theatre and performance studies.
I will be the first to admit that I like the fantasy of the Indiana Jones-like scholar entering the archive alone, sifting through dusty boxes alone, and bringing their discoveries to the light of day. Even more than that, I enjoy daydreaming about a long list of American writers – from Hemingway to Williams to O’Neill – typing out their next major work alone in a hotel room with a mojito, a Ramos fizz, or a Gibson within arm’s reach. That image – as I wrote my dissertation in a too-small apartment with a can of Red Dog sitting nearby – kept me going, writing, and imagining my situation as being loosely related to theirs. There was some truth to the fantasy – but little of its glamour.
In calling for and encouraging multiply signed works, I simply ask that we borrow a page from the humanities-leaning social sciences. Let’s look at the practices of our older and bigger disciplinary siblings like Sociology, Communication Studies, and Anthropology. They do not penalize academics for working together to create original scholarship. Whereas collaboration in the humanities tends to be limited to the production of edited anthologies, it is much more diffuse in the social sciences: conference papers, articles, book chapters, and monographs. Indeed, some of the most influential texts in the social sciences were researched and written by more than one person. Black Metropolis, the magisterial study of life on Chicago’s South Side, required two bodies and two brains to research and write. The presence of these multiple names isn’t a sign of intellectual laziness, but rather a marker of the discussions, debates, and deliberations that resulted in the creation of the work itself. The apportionment of authorial credit, through the order of listed names or the inclusion of a statement specifying the amount and type of labor contributed by each author, makes it fairly easy to determine the motivating force(s) for the project.
In theatre and performance studies, we discuss, debate, and deliberate every bit as much as social scientists. Unfortunately, we work in a discipline that values a singular approach to scholarship. Unfortunately, we work in a discipline that values a singular approach to scholarship. By value, I mean that a person’s ability to obtain a doctorate, to earn tenure, to get promoted, to be bestowed with an honorific chair, frequently depends upon producing work that features one name either on the cover or beneath the title. As a result, emerging, junior, and many mid-career scholars are discouraged from coauthoring until after they have reached their various career milestones: the solo-authored book and/or a series of solo-authored peer-reviewed articles. Collaboration exists as a privilege, held by senior theatre and performance scholars who have proven their ability to work independently.
For those readers who look in the mirror, puff out their chests, and proudly proclaim, "I did it alone. Why can't others?" My response is that scholars can and will continue to go the solo route. Again, just look at the social sciences. I simply ask that we stop punishing and discouraging others from developing coauthored projects. Also, it is necessary to remind those with mirror images that sole-credited authors rarely devise, research, draft, and edit their projects in isolation. Graduate students meet with their faculty advisors (and one another) and over time develop their dissertation projects thanks to the suggestions and edits of others. Faculty test out their ideas in the classroom and, on occasion, employ graduate students to create annotated bibliographies and reading summaries that often find their way into the faculty member's writings. As academics, we go to conferences, present our work, and incorporate the ideas of others – generously offered in the Q&A session – into our revisions. Even this brief essay has benefited from the comments, suggestions, clarifications, and gentle nudges of ASTR Online's editors Charlotte McIvor and Matt Omasta.
In order to change “our value” system, we need to do more than say that it needs to be changed. The fact that Joe, a person who has a PhD, tenure, full professor status, and an honorific chair – or me, a person with the first two and, admittedly, aspirations for the latter two – think coauthorship should occur more frequently is of little help to the person who lacks either a job or job security and, as a result, most feels the pressure not to collaborate and coauthor. To change the system, we, all of us, must begin to acknowledge the individuals who play a prominent role in the development of our publications. We must acknowledge the value of co-authorship. Graduate students, already tasked with serving as a research assistant, should request co-author credit at the beginning of the RAship as a way to encourage their advisors to acknowledge their contributions. Faculty should co-write articles with graduate students, with the aim of using the collaboration as an extra opportunity to mentor the next generation of scholars. Emerging scholars, along with those who have already emerged, should make use of ASTR working groups and similar formations to develop new, co-signed publications. Acquisition editors for university presses should actively seek out multiply signed works. Coauthorship should not be limited to edited anthologies. Hiring and tenure committees should acknowledge the value of multiple signatures and recognize that the identification of the many fingerprints on the page helps to showcase the influence and productivity of prospective and current faculty members.
As theatre and performance folks, we understand the value of collaboration in the production of live art. Why not acknowledge the value of collaboration in the production of theatre and performance scholarship?
About the Author
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“We imagine ourselves as sole, isolated humanists laboring away in our carrel without any connection or indebtedness to (or participation in) a larger network of thinking that actually puts our ideas into the form that makes them interesting. I want to acknowledge those networks of connection in which each one of us is a nodal point, not an isolated star."
Harvey Young directs the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Theatre and Drama program at Northwestern University and serves on the editorial boards of Theatre Survey and Theatre Topics. He is the author of