Geographies of Learning: Theory and Practice, Activism and Performance

Maps the divisions that stall the production of knowledge in theatre and performance studies, queer studies, and women's studies.

Each of Jill Dolan's three academic locations ― theatre and performance studies, lesbian/gay/queer studies (LGQ studies), and women's studies ― is both interdisciplinary and fraught with divisions between theory and practice. As teacher, administrator, author, and performer, Dolan places her professional labor in relation to issues of community, pedagogy, public culture, administration, university missions, and citizenship. She works from the assumption that the production and dissemination of knowledge can be forms of activism, extending conversations on radical politics in the academy by other writers, such as Cary Nelson, Michael Berube, Gerald Graff, and Richard Ohmann. The five interconnected essays in Geographies of Learning map the divisions and dissensions that stall the production of progressive knowledge in theatre and performance studies, LGQ studies, and women's studies, while at the same time exploring some of the theoretical and pedagogical tools these fields have to offer one another.

Jill Dolan is Professor of Theatre at the University of Texas at Austin. Previously she was Professor of Theatre (1994 - 99) and Executive Director of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (1996 - 99) at City University of New York. Past president of both the Association for Theatre in Higher Education and the Women and Theatre Program (of ATHE), she was also managing editor of The Drama Review and Women and Performance Journal. Her books include Presence and Desire: Essays on Gender, Sexuality, Performance (1993), The Feminist Spectator as Critic (1991) and The Drama Review: Thirty Years of Writing on the Avant-Garde, co-edited with Brooks McNamara (1986).