The ATHE conference wrapped up in Chicago on Sunday with a multidisciplinary session, "Hamilton: The Development, Casting, and Performance of a New American Musical," coordinated by Trevor Boffone and sponsored by MTD and by the Latina/o Focus Group (newly changed to the Latinx, Indigenous, and the Americas Focus Group).

A key theme of the papers and subsequent discussion was the challenge in thinking critically about Hamilton with our students, as a number of issues were raised around future academic and spectator engagement with this musical. These included but are not limited to: the role of slavery in the characters' lives and the absence of slaves in the production, colour-blind/non-traditional casting, composer-writer-actor Lin Manuel Miranda's status as a privileged male of colour, Miranda's accolades vs the contributions of his talented collaborators, the context of the Black Lives Matter movement, the tradition of hip hop musicals, the musical's bootstraps narrative, and gender stereotypes. You can consult the hashtag #alexanderpanelton for more coverage on the panel and the discussion: https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=alexanderpanelton&src=typd

Several useful resources for teaching and research were referenced, including #Syllabus4Ham, a reading list curated by Trevor Boffone with sections on Criticism, Perspectives, Ham4Ham, and Interviews (with Alex Lacamoire, Javier Muñoz, Renée Elise Goldsberry, and Lin-Manuel Miranda): https://trevorboffone.com/2016/06/02/syllabus4ham-the-hamilton-syllabus/

The Podcast, Pod4Ham, features track by track discussions of the Hamilton cast recording with different groups of people and can be accessed here: https://www.theincomparable.com/pod4ham/

Blogger, arts advocate, and Ham4Ham videographer Howard Sherman was referenced by several presenters and his Hamilton blog posts are available here: http://www.hesherman.com/tag/hamilton/