Overview
J. Ellen Gainor is Professor in the Department of Performing and Media Arts. A specialist in British and American drama of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and women's dramaturgy, she is the author of the award-winning studies Shaw's Daughters: Dramatic and Narrative Constructions of Gender and Susan Glaspell in Context: American Theater, Culture and Politics 1915-48. She is a co-editor of The Norton Anthology of Drama, co-editor of The Complete Plays of Susan Glaspell, and the editor of Githa Sowerby: Three Plays. She has also edited the influential essay collections Imperialism and Theatre and the co-edited Performing America: Culture Nationalism in American Theater. Her latest publications include the edited volume, Susan Glaspell in Context, for the Literature in Context series from Cambridge University Press, and the co-edited Routledge Anthology of Women’s Theatre Theory & Dramatic Criticism, which received the 2023 George Freedley Memorial Award Special Jury Prize from the Theatre Library Association. She previously served as a literary advisor to both the Mint Theater and the Metropolitan Playhouse in New York and has worked for the Shaw Festival in Canada and the National Theatre in England. She is an elected fellow of the College of Fellows of the American Theatre.
Research Focus
- British and American Drama and Theatre
- Women and Theatre
In the news
- J. Ellen Gainor wins book award from Theatre Library Association
- Gainor elected to College of Fellows of the American Theatre
- Freelance writer Rhoda Feng wins 2022-23 Nathan Award
- Scholars spearhead anthology of women’s theater writing
- Githa Sowerby study illuminates women writers' struggle
- Circus musical ‘Pippin’ at Schwartz Center Jan. 12-14
- Professor J. Ellen Gainor wins career achievement award