Congratulations to our 2018 Award Recipients!

Co-Sponsored Event Grant

The Co-Sponsored Event grant exists to:

• Fulfill ASTR's purpose through collaboration with other organizations and institutions;
• Foster closer relationships with cognate organizations and/or projects; and
• Increase the visibility of the work of both ASTR and the award recipient within a wider professional context.

Recipients

Noe Montez (Tufts University), Charlotte Canning (University of Texas at Austin), Esther Kim Lee (Duke University), and Sara Warner (Cornell University)

The Fourth Symposium on Doctoral Programs in Theatre and Performance Studies (*held October 5-6, Tufts University)

Community Engagement Award

Recipient

Moxie Theater, San Diego, CA

Grant for Teachers with Heavy Working Loads

The goal of the ASTR Grant for Researchers with Heavy Teaching Loads is to ensure that institutional affiliation does not hinder the contributions of individual faculty to debates that concern us all and that are central to ASTR's mission of cultivating scholarship on all aspects of theatre studies. In practical terms, the award provides: research support, which may take the form of funding to obtain or travel to research materials (i.e. archives, interview subjects) or contributing to funding of research assistance or course release, etc.

Recipient

Stefanie Jones

ASTR Collaborative Research Awards

The purpose is to foster the exchange of research across different academic and community contexts within the U.S. or between U.S. scholars/artists and those abroad. To foster long-term relationships benefiting faculty who work in different types of institutional environments. To foster the exchange of research in subject areas underrepresented in U.S. theatre scholarship, pedagogy, and performance practice. To enrich and diversify ASTR’s membership.

Recipient

April Sizemore-Barber (Georgetown University) and Carla Lever (University of Cape Town)
"Social (Re)Movements: Disruptive Decoloniality in South African and American Protest and Performance"

Helen Krich Chinoy Dissertation Fellowship

The Helen Krich Chinoy Dissertation Fellowships are intended to assist Ph.D. candidates with the expenses of travel to national and international collections to conduct research projects connected with their dissertations. These awards are available to Ph.D. candidates who have passed their qualifying exams within the last two years (or will have passed their qualifying exams by June of the current year) and have begun working on their dissertations. The project must be part of the dissertation research.

Recipients

C. Tova Markenson, Northwestern University
"Entrance Forbidden to the Yiddish Theatres: Performance, Prostitution, and Protest in Latin America (1900-1939)"

Ali-Reza Mirsajadi, Tufts University
"Directing Between the Lines: Contemporary Iranian Theatre and the Aesthetics of Ambiguity"

Christopher Rodelo, Harvard University
"A Historical Study of Latinx Performance in the Transnational Nineteenth Century"

Research and Targeted Research Awards

The purpose of the ASTR Research Fellowships is to underwrite some of the research expenses of scholars undertaking projects significant to the field of theatre and/or performance studies. The fellowships can be used in conjunction with funding from other sources. 

Research Fellowship Recipients

Meredith Conti, University at Buffalo, State University of New York
“Gunpowder Plots: A Cultural History of Firearms and the American Theatre”

Jessica Nakamura, University of California, Santa Barbara
"Genealogies of the Private on the Public Stage"

The purpose of the ASTR Targeted Research Area Grants is intended to support specific projects by scholars working in areas important to ASTR's mission that are currently under-represented in its various activities.

Targeted Research Recipients

Ariel Nereson, University at Buffalo, State University of New York
“Dancing Between Concert and Commercial Stages: Risk, Reward, and Racial Politics”

Lisa Jackson-Schebetta, Skidmore College
"Performance and Peace-making in Contemporary Colombia"

Brooks McNamara Publishing Subvention

This subvention supports the costs of securing rights to reproduce illustrations for publication, costs of acquiring illustrations, and/or the costs of reproducing illustrations in conjunction with a book under contract for publication. (Electronic publications will also be considered.)

Recipients

Kate Bredeson, Reed College
Occupying the Stage: the Theater of May ’68 (Northwestern University Press, late 2018/early 2019)

E.J. Westlake, University of Michigan
El Güegüence: The Fluctuating Movement of the Postcolonial Sign (forthcoming from Southern Illinois University Press)

Thomas Marshall Graduate Student Awards and David Keller Travel Awards

The purpose of the Thomas Marshall Graduate Student Awards is to encourage students to become active members of the Society by helping them to meet the expenses of attending the ASTR annual meeting.

Thomas Marshall Student Award Recipients

Lilianne Lugo Herrera, University of Miami
“Virtual Bodies and Archives in Caridad Svich’s Antigone Arkhe”

Mohamadreza Babaee, Bowling Green State University
“Unpacked: Refugee Baggage: Performing Racial Mobility”

Jessica Watkin, University of Toronto

The purpose of the David Keller Travel Awards is to encourage untenured scholars with terminal degrees to become active members of the Society by helping them to meet the expenses of attending the ASTR annual meeting.

David Keller Travel Award Recipients

Areum Jeong, Asia Culture Research Institute, Korea
“K-Pop: Stream Like You Breathe”

Eero Laine , University at Buffalo, State University of New York
“The Integrated Spectator: Theatre Audiences and Pedagogy”

Aoise Stratford, Cornell University
“Re-opening Sarah Kane’s Chamber of Horrors: Blasted as Gothic Drama”

Selma Jeanne Cohen Award

This award provides a scholar to participate in a plenary or working session at the ASTR conference. This presentation must, in the spirit of Selma Jeanne Cohen, explore the intersections of theatre and dance/movement. The purpose of the award is to encourage scholars in dance and movement-based fields to become active members of ASTR by helping them to meet the travel and hotel expenses of attending and presenting at the ASTR annual meeting.

Recipient

Dhiren Borisa, Jawaharial Nehru University"

Cambridge University Press Prize

The Cambridge University Press Prize is a newly constituted award funded by Cambridge University Press and administered by the American Society for Theatre Research.

Recipient

Will Daddario, Independent Scholar
“Kent Monkman, Epistemological Hacking, and the Grimace of Queer Theory"

Gerald Kahan Award

The American Society for Theatre Research offers an annual award for the best essay written and published in English in a refereed scholarly journal. The essay can be on any subject in theater research, broadly construed. The Kahan Prize includes an acknowledgement of the editor’s contribution to scholarship.

Recipient

John MacNeill Miller, Allegheny College
"When Drama Went to the Dogs; or, Staging Otherness in the Animal Melodrama"

Honorable Mentions

Matthew Franks, University of Warwick
"Laboratory, Library, Database: London's Avant-Garde Drama Societies and Ephemeral Repertoire"

Julia Jarcho, New York University
"Cold Theory, Cruel Theater: Staging the Death Drive with Lee Edelman and Hedda Gabler"

Oscar Brockett Award

The Oscar G. Brockett Essay Prize is jointly awarded by the American Society for Theatre Research and the Oscar G. Brockett Center for Theatre History and Criticism at the University of Texas-Austin. The prize recognizes the best essay written and published in English in a refereed scholarly journal or volume published by a scholarly press and relating to any subject in theatre research, broadly construed.

Recipient

Diana Looser, Stanford University
"Viewing Time and the Other: Visualizing Cross-Cultural and Trans-Temporal Encounters in Lisa Reihana’s in Pursuit of Venus [infected],"

Sally Banes Publication Prize

This award is given in even-numbered years. This prize honors the publication (book or essay) that, in the opinion of the prize committee, best explores the intersections of theatre and dance/movement in the previous two calendar years.

Recipient

Judith Hamera, Princeton University
Unfinished Business: Michael Jackson, Detroit, and the Figural Economy of American Deindustralizatio

Honorable Mention

Rebekah J. Kowal, Randy Martin, and Gerald Siegmund, Eds.
The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Politics

Errol Hill Award

The Errol Hill Award is given in recognition of outstanding scholarship in African American theater, drama, and/or performance studies, as demonstrated in the form of a published book-length project (monograph or essay collection) or scholarly article. The book or article must have been published during the previous calendar year (2016 for the 2017 award), and deal with African American theater history, dramatic literature, or performance studies (research on dance, acting and directing, public performances, i.e., parades, pageants, etc.).

Recipient

Kellen Hoxworth, Dartmouth College

Barnard Hewitt Award

The Barnard Hewitt Award for Outstanding Research in Theatre History is awarded each year to the best book in "theatre history or cognate disciplines” published during the previous calendar year (2016). The University of Illinois initiated the Award many years ago to honor its founding department chair, Barnard Hewitt.

Recipient

Heather S. Nathans, Tufts University
Hideous Characters and Beautiful Pagans: Performing Jewish Identity on the Antebellum American Stage

Honorable Mention

Katherine A. Zien, McGill University
Sovereign Acts: Performing Race, Space, and Belonging in Panama and the Canal Zone

Distinguished Scholar Award

The Distinguished Scholar Award is given each year to a scholar whose body of work has made a significant contribution to the field of theatre, dance, opera, and/or performance studies. The three immediately previous Distinguished Scholar Award winners will consider the candidates and select the recipient.

Recipient

Elinor Fuchs, Yale School of Drama