10th SAAS CONFERENCE

“The Backyard of the U.S. Mansion: Critical readings of poverty and wealth in the United States”

Alcalá de Henares (Madrid).  April 14-16, 2011

 

7) Land/Scapes on the USA Stage: Theatrical Interventions in the Land of Opportunity

Panel Chair: Noelia Hernando Real
Institution: CSEU La Salle- UAM
E-mail: noelia.hernando@uam.es

From its very foundation, landscape has been used ideologically in the creation of the national identity of the United States. As E. L. Magoon put it in his essay “Scenery and Mind”: ‘The diversified landscapes of our country exert no light influence in creating our character as individuals, and in conforming our destiny as a nation.” But while the mythology that the USA was the land of the cornucopia where there was a place for everybody and where the common dream of prosperity founded on notions of liberty, equality and free enterprise was transmitted, contesting elements of the myth had to be used and repressed. Native Americans were exterminated or put on reservations, African Americans were enslaved, and immigrants who did not fit into the WASP cosmology were simply left out on the margins of this mythological landscape. In her 1920 play Inheritors, Susan Glaspell already realized that “They’re people from the other side of the world who came here believing in us, drawn from the far side of world by things we say about ourselves. Well, I’m going to pretend – just for fun – that the things we say about ourselves are true” (139). As a living experience, theater provides the audience with the unavoidable confrontation with the landscape of the stage. This panel focuses on the works of American playwrights who explore the possibilities of landscape to discuss questions of poverty and wealth. The overall objective is to discuss the American stage as the site where the American Dream scenario of material and spiritual wealth is re-negotiated, questioned and re-written. This panel welcomes papers which address the following issues:

- How do playwrights explore the relationship between landscape and individual or national
  destiny regarding poverty and wealth?

- How are the mythological landscapes of the American Dream re-worked?

- How is the stage space used to escape from the land of poverty and/or how does the stage
  represent the USA as a land of opportunity?

- What are the theatrical relations between migration and American landscapes in the works of USA playwrights?

- What voices are suppressed in the American landscape?

 

10th INTERNATIONAL SAAS CONFERENCE
Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, 14-16 April 2011

THE BACKYARD OF THE U.S.A. MANSION: Critical Readings of Poverty and Wealth in the United States

Name:

Academic Affiliation:

E-mail:

Title of Proposal:

Panel:

Special requirements, if any:

Abstract (400-600 words):

Please, complete this form and send it, in electronic format (via e-mail), to the Chair of your selected panel. Deadline for sending proposals is October 29, 2010.