Failure, Fascism, and Teachers in American Theatre

In crystalline prose and with astute and compelling insight, James Wilson critically and historically engages the representation of teachers in American drama and performance from the 20th century to the present. With fascinating, rich examples from plays inside and outside the canon, Wilson demonstrates how the character of the beloved or bedeviled pedagogue bears the weight of cultural ambivalence about not just education but also about power and influence, identity and social expectation. Richly observant and delightfully trenchant, Failure, Fascism, and Teachers in American Theatre instructs us all in the enduring power of performance and plays to explicate our history and to inform our present.

--Jill Dolan

Princeton University
Author of The Feminist Spectator as Critic
This timely and accessible book explores the shifting representations of schoolteachers and professors in plays and performances primarily from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in the United States. Examining various historical and recurring types, such as spinsters, schoolmarms, presumed sexual deviants, radicals and communists, fascists, and emasculated men teachers, Wilson shines the spotlight on both well-known and nearly-forgotten plays. The analysis draws on a range of scholars from cultural and gender studies, queer theory, and critical race discourses to consider teacher characters within notable education movements and periods of political upheaval. Richly illustrated, the book will appeal to theatre scholars and general readers as it delves into plays and performances that reflect cultural fears, desires, and fetishistic fantasies associated with educators. In the process, the scrutiny on the array of characters may help illuminate current attacks on real-life teachers while providing meaningful opportunities for intervention in the ongoing education wars.
James F. Wilson is the Executive Officerof the Theatre and Performance Program at the Graduate Center, CUNY, USA. His work has appeared in several chapter anthologies and academic journals, and he is the author of Bulldaggers, Pansies, and Chocolate Babies: Race, Performance, and Sexuality in the Harlem Renaissance (2010).