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Peace

Peace, People Ready or not, it’s that jingle bells, party party, forced family fun, scrape the car windshield, deck the halls, don’t make me go out there again , I just want to stay home and watch A Christmas Carol for the billionth . . . time of year. Are we ready? The last few weeks of my sabbatical are winding down just as the holiday season kicks into high gear, and I find myself suspended in time and staring off into the distance. Like a LOT. I’ve made great progress on

kellyjo91

Dec 5, 20253 min read

Tell Me a Story

Over the weekend, I found myself pasting a quote from a recent article in The New Yorker by Jill Lepore into my Evernote app. I didn’t want to forget it. The article was focused on how people are wrestling with telling the story of the American Revolution for its upcoming 250 th anniversary. But it made me pause for additional reasons. It forced me to think more deeply about teaching and learning about history. Here is the quote: Much academic history suffers from pedantry

kellyjo91

Nov 18, 20254 min read

This is Your Brain on Academia

Welcome Slide for the ASTR Conference, Denver, CO 2025 Last week I attended the ASTR (American Society for Theatre Research) Conference for the first time. It was held in Denver this year, and I’m on sabbatical to research and write a book, so I thought I better not pass up the opportunity. Let me summarize: Day One: Ostracized Day Two: Tolerated Day Three: Disoriented Day Four: Punted. Streamed movies with my husband. He made me watch Die Hard , which seemed vaguely appr

kellyjo91

Nov 10, 20254 min read

Is Shakespeare Legit?

Shakespeare Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay For today’s blog, I’ll start with a little story. A few years ago, when I was barely beginning to think about rebelling against Eurocentric theatre history textbooks, I got a big scholarly shove from a great group of students at Red Rocks Community College. We were maybe a third of the way through the semester, and I was about to launch into a new module in our Theatre Appreciation class, an overview of theatre history in th

kellyjo91

Oct 28, 20254 min read

Who Needs a Backup Plan?

Keenan Tyler Oliphant from Columbia University News article by Nicole Saldarriaga Last week, I spent a lot of time looking at the job of the Director for my Theatre Appreciation open educational resource textbook. I learned that this job only emerged in the West in the nineteenth century. Before that, job duties associated with a director might have gone to an actor, a teacher, the playwright, or even an older family member. In ancient Greece, the playwright led the coordin

kellyjo91

Oct 20, 20256 min read

Immersed in Abydos

Hieroglyph photo by Esther Fürstenberg Imagine me with hands on hips striking a sassy pose. I just don’t get it. So many theater historians are still hanging on to the idea that the first “real” theater happened in Greece at around 500 BCE. They are such snobs. Leave it to this actor-turned-academic to say HOLD ON A MINUTE. How can any thinking person believe it took humans that long to create theater? Seriously. To be fair, many older examples of theater do occasionally ma

kellyjo91

Oct 13, 20256 min read