PSWG Statement on COVID-19 // Cancellation of Spring 2020 Events

Dear all,⁣


First, Kimberly and I would like to thank all of you for your sustained, vigorous, and passionate engagement with the working group this year. We’ve noticed a pronounced uptick in attendance this year, and our speakers have mentioned to us many times that they’ve appreciated the engagement and generosity of our members.⁣


In keeping with the restrictions that Yale has implemented for the rest of the year, we are cancelling the rest of the PSWG meetings for the year. We’re devastated to lose these voices and the opportunity to engage with them, but it is what we must do to keep us all as healthy as possible. We’re in the process of rescheduling as many of these speakers as we can for next year, and we hope to be able to announce plans for the next year by the end of the summer.⁣


We’ll be in touch with information and other announcements throughout the rest of the semester. We’re cancelling all our scheduled presentations, but we’re holding open the possibility of an online gathering, celebration, or exploration of community, collaboration, and liveness at the end of the semester. If you’re interested, just keep it in mind, think of what you’d like, and contact us if you have ideas.


Should you like to share your work with us next year, or if you have a person you’d like us to hear from, please reach out to Kimberly and me.⁣


Our best,⁣


Charlie & Kimberly

La Marr Jurelle Bruce awarded Joe Weixlmann Award at MLA

We’re delighted to announce that La Marr Jurelle Bruce was awarded the Joe Weixlmann Award for Best Essay Representing Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century African-American or Pan-African Literature and Culture. This award is given by African American Review, the Publication of the Black Literature Forum of the Modern Language Association. The essay, entitled “‘The People Inside My Head, Too’: Madness, Black Womanhood, and the Radical Performance of Lauryn Hill,” appeared in a special issue of AAR, “On Black Performance.”

Joseph Roach named 2013 ATHE Oscar Brockett Outstanding Teacher

Congratulations to Joseph Roach, Sterling Professor of Theater and English and Principle Investigator of IPSY, who was recently named the recipient of the 2013 Oscar Brockett Outstanding Teacher Award by the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE). This award “honors a college-level faculty member whose superiority as a teacher of theatre is recognized by students and colleagues,” and among other qualities is “known for supporting multiculturalism and diversity in theatre and/or education.”

Nominators’ Citation: “For those of us nominating him here, and for the legions more whom Joe has taught—he has forever marked us. We quote him in our syllabi, steal his ideas for our own classes, invoke him in our writing, dedicate our own work to him, and enjoy our ongoing correspondence. In short, he has changed each one of us, and the way we think about performance and the academy—but also ourselves and our worlds. He has made us better world citizens, and our gratitude is immense. We recognize him for his contributions to our field, and now, especially, to higher education. Joseph Roach the tremendous scholar is to us our Joe, and we nominate him with great warmth and enthusiasm for ATHE’s Outstanding Teacher of Theatre in Higher Education.”

Joey Plaster’s project featured on NPR’s Hearing Voices

PSWG member Joey Plaster spent a year gathering 70+ oral histories from people experiencing Polk Street’s transition from San Francisco’s working class queer neighborhood to an upscale entertainment district. This radio special, based on the project, was distributed nationally via NPR’s HearingVoices:
http://hearingvoices.com/news/2012/01/hv099-polk-street-stories/.

Georgetown University is now adapting the piece for the stage, with performances scheduled for March:
http://events.georgetown.edu/events/?Action=View&EventID=96869&CalendarID=251.

2011-2012 Awards and Appointments

IPSY Principal Investigator, Professor Joseph Roach, was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Paige McGinley, Assistant Professor of Theater Studies and American Studies and PSWG member, won the 2011 Poorvu Family Award for Interdisciplinary Teaching in Yale College.  

Daniel Larham, PhD, PSWG member and Lecturer in Theatre Studies, has been appointed Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Theatre Studies program.

Christopher Grobe, PhD, former PSWG Co-Convener and currently Assistant Professor of English at Amherst College, won the 2012 Prize for the Best Dissertation in English Language and Literature at Yale: “Performing Confession:  Poetry, Performance and New Media since 1959” 

The citation reads:  “Christopher Grobe’s ambitious dissertation studies the prevalence of confession in American culture, high and low, since the 1960s.  He argues that, far from transparent personal expression, confession is best understood–in genres such as confessional poetry, performance art, the theatrical monologue, and reality television–as a performance of the self.  The project is a stirring demonstration of what literary studies, performance studies, and media studies can accomplish together.” 

Lynda Paul, PhD, former PSWG Co-Convener, has been appointed Andrew W. Mellon Interdisciplinary Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale for 2012-2014  following the completion of her dissertation in the Department of Music, titled:  “Sonic Vegas:  Live Virtuality and the Cirque du Soleil.”

James “Jamie” O’Leary, PhD, PSWG Member, was recognized at the GSAS Commencement Convocation as a graduating winner of a Prize Teaching Fellowship (2009-2010).  Recently appointed Assistant Professor of Music at the Oberlin Conservatory, he completed his dissertation in the Department of Music (2012):  “Broadway Highbrow:  Discourse and Politics of the American Musical, 1943-1946.”

Postdoctoral Fellow and PSWG Co-Convener Julia Fawcett has been appointed Assistant Professor of English at Ryerson University in Toronto.  We thank her for her formative contributions to IPSY in its first year, and we wish her the best, saying, and she taught us,  “The higher the hair, the closer to God.”