Subject Guides: 10 Centuries of Plays by Women: About This Guide...

History and Political Science Librarian

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Reference Department
Ralph Brown Draughon Library
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Auburn University, AL 36849-5606

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Subjects: Drama, History, Military Science, Political Science, Theatre

This subject guide is based on the 2015 article* by Susan Jonas and is an attempt to provide access to the plays within Auburn Libraries' collections. Out of over 60 plays Auburn has all but one, So Help Me God by Maurine Dallas Watkins, which was never published.

Use the links to the left to navigate the list. The list is in chronological order because that was the way it was presented in the article. The entries indicate the play title, the author, and the date it was originally written, performed, or published.

Plays on our shelves as parts of anthologies or collections are mentioned in the notes. The book cover is used as only as illustration and may not reference the actual edition or play owned by Auburn University Libraries. When a book cover was not available Wikimedia Commons was used to identify freely available images.The links for the plays will take you to the library record where you will find location and availability information. In some cases library records of the plays published from 1801-1922 will take you to HathiTrust where you can download the entire work as a PDF after you login.

The links to the biographical sketches come from a variety of sources including encyclopedias, archives, and even a literary property agent. The majority do point to the public version of the Encyclopedia Britannica; however, there are a few linked to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography which will require you to login using your AU ID and password; these are marked with the double plus(++). All books, articles, databases and web sites referenced in the making of this guide are listed below.

*Jonas, Susan. "The Other Canon." American Theatre 32, no. 8 (October 2015): 52-53.

Reference and Resources

The actual plays or the collections they in are not listed on this page.

Articles:

Keating, Sara. "Fired from the Canon: The Fate of Irish Female Playwrights" Irish Times (Dec. 2, 2015)
Jonas, Susan. "The Other Canon." American Theatre 32, no. 8 (October 2015): 52-53

Books:

African American Dramatists by Emmanuel S. Nelson (Editor)
Call Number: PS 338 .N4 A69 2004
ISBN: 0313322333
Publication Date: 2004-10-30
Despite their significant contributions to the American theater, African American dramatists have received less critical attention than novelists and poets. This reference offers thorough critical assessments of the lives and works of African American playwrights from the 19th century to the present. The book alphabetically arranges entries on more than 60 dramatists, including James Baldwin, Arna Bontemps, Ossie Davis, Zora Neale Hurston, and Richard Wright. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and includes a biography, a discussion of major works and themes, a summary of the playwright's critical reception, and primary and secondary bibliographies. The volume closes with a selected, general bibliography. African American dramatists have made enormous contributions to the theater and their works are included in numerous editions and anthologies. Some of the most popular plays of the 20th century have been written by African Americans, and high school students and undergraduates study their works. But for all their popularity and influence, African American playwrights have received less critical attention than poets and novelists. This reference offers thorough critical assessments of more than 60 African American dramatists from the 19th century to the present.
Ottemiller's Index to Plays in Collections by John H. Ottemiller; Denise L. Montgomery
Call Number: PN 1655 .O8 2011 ELECTRONIC
ISBN: 9780810877214
Publication Date: 2011-07-01
Appendix B is a list of Women authors.
Living with Lynching by Koritha Mitchell
Call Number: PS 338 .N4 M455 2011
ISBN: 9780252036491
Publication Date: 2011-10-04
Living with Lynching: African American Lynching Plays, Performance, and Citizenship, 1890-1930 demonstrates that popular lynching plays were mechanisms through which African American communities survived actual and photographic mob violence. Often available in periodicals, lynching plays were read aloud or acted out by black church members, schoolchildren, and families. Koritha Mitchell shows that African Americans performed and read the scripts in community settings to certify to each other that lynch victims were not the isolated brutes that dominant discourses made them out to be. Instead, the play scripts often described victims as honorable heads of household being torn from model domestic units by white violence.In closely analyzing the political and spiritual uses of black theatre during the Progressive Era, Mitchell demonstrates that audiences were shown affective ties in black families, a subject often erased in mainstream images of African Americans. Examining lynching plays as archival texts that embody and reflect broad networks of sociocultural activism and exchange in the lives of black Americans, Mitchell finds that audiences were rehearsing and improvising new ways of enduring in the face of widespread racial terrorism. Images of the black soldier, lawyer, mother, and wife helped readers assure each other that they were upstanding individuals who deserved the right to participate in national culture and politics. These powerful community coping efforts helped African Americans band together and withstand the nation's rejection of them as viable citizens.

Databases:

HathiTrust This link opens in a new window
Most pre-1925 books are in the public domain and you can download the entire work after you login. Use the Login link on Hathitrust and select Auburn University before entering your Auburn ID and password.

Internet Broadway Database (IBDB)

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography This link opens in a new window OXNB is an illustrated collection of 50,000 especially written biographies of the men and women who shaped all aspects of Britain's past, from the fourth century BC to 2000.

Encyclopedias:

Encyclopedia.com
Encyclopedia Britannica [public version]
Jewish Women's Archive Encyclopedia

Publishers of Plays and Musicals:

Internet Sites: