Musical Theatre Studies

Michael Garber sends the following:

The complete published proceedings of the Hawaii International Conference on the Arts and Humanities are available for free on-line in a downloadable pdf format, here.

The papers published by this interdisciplinary conference offer a valuable resource to researchers of all levels. Among these five-to-ten thousand page documents are several interesting complete papers on musicals (as well as some short abstracts).
Complete papers, in chronological order, include:

• James Gifford. “Introducing Creativity and the Arts into a New Technology-Centered Curriculum: A Report on a Work in Progress.” 2004 Proceedings. (Includes a discussion of using West Side Story as part of this technology-centered curriculum for a new degree program in Web and Media Development.)
• Eleanor M. Johnston. “’Amor Vincit Omnia’: Love in Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Life and Works.” 2004 Proceedings. (A well-focused biographical essay about this composer of film scores, opera, and operetta.)
• Laura Hanson. “The First Modernist Musical: Sondheim’s Company.” 2005 Proceedings. (An analysis of this musical’s relationship to preceding Broadway theatre and modernist art movements.)
• Timothy P. Kinsella. “Strike Up the Band: War, Satire, Art, and Praxis.” 2005 Proceedings. (A history and analysis of the Gershwin brothers’ 1930 Broadway musical.)
• Candace Pfefferkorn. “America’s Transformation from Vaudeville Theater to Movie House: The Mass Dissemination of Movie Sound Technology.” 2006 Proceedings. (This historical account of the coming of Vitaphone extensively discusses the 1927 movie of The Jazz Singer.)
• Ronald N. Bukoff. “’Here Am I, Your Special Island’: Pan-Asia on the Western Musical Stage.” 2007 Proceedings. (A survey and analysis of images of Asia and Polynesia in American, British, German, and Hungarian musical theatre.)
• Lisa Campbell Albert, Christine Knoblauch-O’Neal, and Annamaria Pileggi. “Musical Theatre as Liberal Inquiry: The Pathway to Craft.” 2007 Proceedings. (Describes in some detail their approach to teaching musical theatre craftsmanship within a liberal arts context.)
• David Goldblatt. “The Spiritual Violist: The Use of Improvisatory Viola in Jewish and Christian Liturgical Contexts.” 2007 Proceedings.( Discusses Fiddler on the Roof in a sub-section called “The Jewish Connection to Stringed Instruments: A Powerfully Socially Constructed Image.”)
• Laura Hanson. “’I Could Have Danced All Night’: The Choreographic Scenery of Oliver Smith.” 2007 Proceedings. (Describes how Smith approached musical theatre set design, using My Fair Lady as a specific, in-depth example.)

Short abstracts (in chronological order):

• Betsy Cooper. Abstract, “The Hollywood Musical and Censorship: The Dancing Body’s Subversion of the Production Code.” 2004 Proceedings.
• Daphne Lamothe. Abstract: “Cultural Memory and the Staging of Blackness.” 2004 Proceedings. (A discussion of Katherine Dunham’s choreography, using the movie musical Stormy Weather as one of two main examples.)
• Barbara Parisi. Abstract: “Critical Reaction to Feminism in the Off-Broadway American Musical Theatre (1970-1990).” 2005 Proceedings.
• Paula Marie Seniors. Abstract: “The Red Moon: The Interconnections Between Theater and History and the Black and Native Americanization Program at Hampton Institute.” 2005 Proceedings.
• Rod Hernandez. Abstract: “The Spoiled Fruit of Carmen Miranda.” 2006 Proceedings.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 29th, 2008 at 12:31 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.