I can’t think of a production I’ve seen anywhere that made such creative and engaging use of its setting. Space, acting, tech, story: everything truly does chime in this polished production.
Listening to Haints on St. John: Confronting the Hard Reminders of Caribbean Sugar’s History
The breeze is gentle as I stand at a cluster of ruins on St. John, USVI, but the history here is not. Catherineberg is one of several sites on the island that mark where enslaved people labored long, hot, debilitating hours to produce sugar. The Catherineberg site has not been re-cast for more formal, official …
Theatre and Joy in Fort Worth: James Ijames’s “Fat Ham” and the Marleys’ “Three Little Birds”
I want to sing praise for two Fort-Worth-based theatrical productions in this blogpost. But first I need to share a bit of context from July theatre-going beyond Texas that will help explain why I’m so proud of our local theatre scene. The Three Little Birds show Jubilee Theatre offered up recently as a multi-generational song-and-story …
Eboni Booth’s “Primary Trust” Celebrates Human Connections: A Grateful Review
Early in the new Stage West production of "Primary Trust," lead character Kenneth addresses the audience, offering up several interrelated observations about what they are about to see. "This is a story of how if you had asked me six months ago if I was lonely, I would have said--." But then, after a brief …
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Percival Everett’s James Calls Out for Intertextual Reading
One link-up certainly invited by this text is to revisit Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Indeed, I’m currently re-reading Twain’s novel after recently completing Everett’s. And I may have some more detailed thoughts to share in that regard soon. title page of first edition first page of final chapter Already, though, just through …
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Celebrating Phillis Wheatley Peters in a Participatory Humanities Project
As one of the codirectors of a year-long initiative honoring the life and work of Phillis Wheatley Peters, I'm pausing this week to reflect on our collaborative project's progress. Reflection, after all, is a habit of mind and an action that representations of Wheatley Peters herself tend to associate with her writing and her life, …
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Thanking Native American Mentors:
Recognizing the “Mourning” Elements of Thanksgiving alongside Learning Gifts Dennis Zotigh (Kiowa/Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo/Isante Dakota Indian), in a 2011 essay, Thanksgiving from an Indigenous Perspective, updated this November 2022, asks a vital question about how “Native Americans make peace with a national holiday that romanticizes the 1621 encounter between their ancestors and English settlers, and erases …
How to Enact Democracy?
JQA at Stage West Deftly Asks This Question about The Past and Today In March of 2019, Aaron Posner directed the first production of his own 90-minute play about John Quincy Adams (1767-1848), the “other” Adams to serve as US President, like his father John Adams for only one term. That premiere at the Arena …
Why Are Academics So Busily Writing About “The Chair”?
A hurricane is tearing up New Orleans and much of Louisiana, then spiraling north. COVID hospitalizations are spiking exponentially. Wildfires are tearing up the west coast. Chaos has reigned over the withdrawal from Afghanistan. And what are we humanities-oriented academics (especially English-Department and American Studies types) seemingly talking about most energetically on twitter and beyond? …
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Phillis Wheatley’s Arrival
A Poignant Anniversary with Implications for Teaching Phillis Wheatley arrived in Boston from her African homeland 260 years ago this month, in July 1761. Though only about seven or eight years old, she was transported with other captives aboard the Phillis as part of an ongoing push to make slavery central to the economies …
Now’s a great time to thank a teacher
I got a wonderful gift over the winter holiday. A former student, Amanda Davis Closs, wrote me about how a course I taught, and especially a project she worked on in the class--over a decade ago, long before I came to my current job at TCU--has remained important to her. She described how the community …
Flying During Covid-19: Planes, Poems, and Virtual Journeys
If once you have slept on an island You’ll never be quite the same; [....] You may sit at home and sew, But you’ll see blue water and wheeling gulls Wherever your feet may go. From a poem by Rachel Field Won’t you help to sing These songs of freedom ‘Cause all I ever have …
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Revisiting Women’s Suffrage from an Intersectional Perspective
Hanging side by side above the imposing entrance to the southwest hall of the Library of Congress (LOC), three large banners announce exhibits currently open there. One is a permanent fixture at the LOC. A recreation of Thomas Jefferson’s impressive home library allows visitors to enter a circle of shelves showcasing the beautiful leather-bound volumes …
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Extending Veterans Day and Spotlighting Native Americans Who Have Served
“This star I am wearing is for my husband, a member of the great Sioux Nation, who is a volunteer in Uncle Sam’s Army.” From Gertrude Bonnin (Zitkala-Ša), writing in The American Indian Magazine, in an article on WWI Veterans Day—a day to honor all the women and men who have served as members of …
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Constitutionally Focused at Stage West, Fort Worth: Revisiting a Core Document During Election Season
I may not have been a typical audience member when I attended the opening-night performance of Stage West’s What the Constitution Means to Me on October 19. After all, I’m a professor currently teaching a course on citizenship literature. I arrived at the theatre a few days after facilitating a class discussion on John Marshall …
Authorship Analyzed: Gretchen Eick’s double biography explores the writing careers (and marriage) of Charles and Elaine Eastman
Every few years, I teach a graduate seminar on "Authorship." I've just begun the latest offering of the course. Preparing for it always involves reading around the topic in a range of ways: exploring memoirs by writers about their craft, revisiting issues of authorship such as copyright and intellectual property, and considering how to promote …
Sarah Ruffing Robbins 