ATHE’s Award for Outstanding Book is given on the basis of the study's potential to interrupt, change and/or challenge theatre practice and pedagogy - often emphasizing the interconnectedness of pedagogy and practice. We are pleased to announce that this year’s winners are:

Kareem Khubchandani

Ishtyle: Accenting Gay Indian Nightlife
University of Michigan Press, 2020

Kareem Khubchandani is the Mellon Bridge Assistant Professor in Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Tufts University. He is the author of Ishtyle: Accenting Gay Indian Nightlife (University of Michigan Press, 2020), co-editor of Queer Nightlife (University of Michigan Press, 2021), and recipient of the 2019 CLAGS Fellowship.

Carrie Noland

Merce Cunningham: After the Arbitrary
University of Chicago Press, 2020

Carrie Noland is Professor of French and Comparative Literature and Director of the International Center for Writing and Translation at the University of California, Irvine. She is the author of four books: Poetry at Stake: Lyric Aesthetics and the Challenge of Technology (1999); Agency and Embodiment (2009); Voices of Negritude in Modernist Print (2015); and Merce Cunningham: After the Arbitrary (2020). In collaboration with anthropologist Sally Ann Ness, she co-edited Migrations of Gesture (2008), and, with poet Barrett Watten, she co-edited Diasporic Avant-Gardes (2009). Noland studies the interplay between technology and artistic creation from a variety of angles, moving from performance poetry to dance, from subjectivation to racialization. She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment of the Humanities, the American Philosophical Society, the Camargo Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Clark/Oakley Humanities Center, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. She has studied dance with Bertram Ross (Martha Graham), Steven Pier (José Limon), Ellen Cornfield (Merce Cunnngham), Adrienne Hawkins, and Lynn Simonson, and for over 30 years has been a practitioner of Iyengar Yoga. Much of her academic work is inspired by her training in these movement techniques.

Acceptance Speeches

The committee is also delighted to recognize the following scholars for their outstanding work:

HONORABLE MENTION

Patricia Herrera

Nuyorican Feminist Performance: From the Café to Hip Hop Theater
University of Michigan Press, 2020

As a community-engaged educator, scholar, and artist, Dr. Patricia Herrera uses the arts, theater, and performance to collectively practice justice. Since 2011 she worked on a public humanities project entitled Civil Rights and Education in Richmond, Virginia: A Documentary Theater Project, which has led to the creation of a digital archive The Fight for Knowledge, as well as three community exhibitions at The Valentine Museum and a series of seven docudramas about gentrification, educational disparities, HIV/AIDS, segregation and Latinos in Richmond.

FINALISTS

• La Donna L. Forsgren, Sistuhs in the Struggle: An Oral History of Black Arts Movement Theater and Performance (Northwestern University Press, 2020)
• Rebekah J. Kowal, Dancing the World Smaller: Staging Globalism in Mid-Century America (Oxford University Press, 2020)
• Sean Metzger, The Chinese Atlantic: Seascapes and the Theatricality of Globalization (Indiana University Press, 2020)
• Marlis Schweitzer, Bloody Tyrants & Little Pickles: Stage Roles of Anglo-American Girls in the Nineteenth Century (University of Iowa Press, 2020)
• Stacy Wolf, Beyond Broadway: The Pleasure and Promise of Musical Theatre Across America (Oxford University Press, 2020)

ATHE offers its special thanks to the Outstanding Book award subcommittee members for their work this cycle.