This volume provides an accessible and engaging guide to the study of American dramatic literature. Designed to support students in reading, discussing, and writing about commonly assigned American plays, this text offers timely resources to think critically and originally about key moments on the American stage.
Combining comprehensive coverage of the core plays from the post-Revolutionary era to the present, each chapter includes:
- historical and cultural context of each of the plays and their distinctive literary features
- clear introductions to the ongoing critical debates they have provoked
- collaborative prompts for classroom or online discussion
- annotated bibliographies for further research
With its accessible prose style and clear structure, this introduction spotlights specific plays while encouraging students to contemplate timely questions of American identity across its selected span of US theatrical history.
Chapter 1: The Contrast (1787) by Royall Tyler
Chapter 2: André (1798) by William Dunlap
Chapter 3: The Indian Princess (1808) by James Nelson Barker
Chapter 4: Fashion; Or, Life in New York (1845) by Anna Cora Mowatt
Chapter 5: The Octoroon; or, Life in Louisiana (1859) by Dion Boucicault
Chapter 6: Margaret Fleming (1890) by James A. Herne
Chapter 7: Trifles (1916) by Susan Glaspell
Chapter 8: The Children’s Hour (1934) by Lillian Hellman
Chapter 9: Our Town (1938) by Thornton Wilder
Chapter 10: A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) by Tennessee Williams
Chapter 11: Death of a Salesman (1949) by Arthur Miller
Chapter 12: Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1956) by Eugene O’Neill
Chapter 13: A Raisin in the Sun (1959) by Lorraine Hansberry
Chapter 14: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962) by Edward Albee
Chapter 15: Funnyhouse of a Negro (1964) by Adrienne Kennedy
Chapter 16: Fences (1985) by August Wilson
Chapter 17: Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes (1993-94) by Tony
Kushner
Chapter 18: Sisters Matsumoto (1998) by Philip Kan Gotanda
Chapter 19: Topdog/Underdog (2002) by Suzan-Lori Parks
Chapter 20: Water by the Spoonful (2012) by Quiara Alegría Hudes
Chapter 21: An Octoroon (2014) by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
Biography
Paul Thifault, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English at Springfield College in Massachusetts, where he teaches courses on US drama, early American literature, and Native American literature. With Nancy Sweet, he edits Resources for American Literary Study, a long-running journal of archival and bibliographical scholarship on all periods of American literature.
