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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

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

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

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