Central community recognised at the 2021 Association for Theatre in Higher Education Awards
Congratulations to members of the Central community whose outstanding work has been recognised at the 2021 Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) Awards.
ATHE supports and advances the study and practice of theatre and performance in higher education. An advocate for the field of theatre and performance in higher education, it serves as an intellectual and artistic center for producing new knowledge about theatre and performance-related disciplines, cultivating vital alliances with other scholarly and creative disciplines, linking with professional and community-based theatres, and promoting access and equity.
ATHE’s awards honour excellence in and exceptional contributions to teaching, scholarship, playwriting, and artistic practice in educational and professional theatre.
Members of the Central community were amongst this year’s award winners including Catherine Fitzmaurice (Ellen Stewart Career Achievement in Professional Theatre), Professor Kareem Khubchandani (Outstanding Book) and Professor Joanne Tompkins (Excellence in Editing).
Of ATHE’S acknowledgement of these remarkable achievements, Central’s Interim Dean of School/ Director of Teaching and Learning and ATHE President Dr Joshua Abrams said:
“This is a significant recognition of Central’s historic and ongoing importance across the world of theatre and performance globally. Following Professor Maria Delgado’s receipt of the Career Achievement Award in Academic Theatre last year, this continued acknowledgement from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education should be one of celebration and pride for everyone at Central.”
This is a significant recognition of Central’s historic and ongoing importance across the world of theatre and performance globally.
Recipient of the Ellen Stewart Career Achievement in Professional Theatre Award, Catherine Fitzmaurice began her teaching career at Central in 1965 in voice, verse-speaking and prose reading. Alongside her work at Central, she has held illustrious appointments at the Juilliard School, New York University, Yale School of Drama, Harvard University, Lincoln Center, the Moscow Art Theatre, the Stratford Shakespearean Festival and the Institute del Teatre and Eolia Drama School in Barcelona, Spain. Over fifty years, Catherine Fitzmaurice has been dedicated to sharing her knowledge with students and, through a rigorous certification process, she has trained and certified over 275 teachers of Fitzmaurice Voicework, both in the United States and Abroad. The influence of her work is truly worldwide, as those certified teachers provide instruction in universities and conservatoires, private workshops and classes on six continents.
Professor Joanne Tompkins, a previous Research Fellow at Central who is based at the University of Queensland, was awarded the ATHE’s Excellence in Editing Award. Professor Tompkins has published widely on spatiality and theatre, among other topics. She has co-edited/edited Modern Drama and Theatre Journal, and special issues of Contemporary Theatre Review and Australasian Drama Studies. The Australasian Drama Studies Association named an editing prize after her. She is a Fellow of Australia’s Academy of Humanities; the recipient of an honorary doctorate from Queen Mary, University of London; and an executive committee member for the International Federation for Theatre Research.
“I’m extremely pleased to be the recipient of the ATHE Excellence in Editing award. Editing is one of the most challenging and rewarding parts of our work as academics; it helps us communicate and shape our ideas in as cogent a fashion as possible for the maximum effect. I’m grateful to have been able to participate in this collaborative effort working with many authors, helping them to develop essays to their full potential, which in turn helps to build our field. Thanks very much, ATHE!” - Professor Joanne Tompkins
Professor Kareem Khubchandani has been a Central Research Fellow and is currently the Mellon Bridge assistant professor in theater, dance, and performance studies, and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Tufts University. He was awarded the ATHE’s Outstanding Book Award for his Ishtyle: Accenting Gay Indian Nightlife (University of Michigan Press, 2020). Professor Khubchandani is also the co-editor of Queer Nightlife (University of Michigan Press, 2021), a recipient of the 2019 CLAGS Fellowship, and curator of www.criticalauntystudies.com. He holds a PhD in Performance Studies from Northwestern University.
“I attended ATHE for the first time through the debut panel of the LGBTQ Focus Group—debut panels are juried sessions that waive conference fees for first-time attendees. This invitation to attend the conference has been deeply formative and being part of ATHE has shaped everything I do. At ATHE, I’ve presented chapters of my book project, emceed a pre-conference cabaret in drag, and fostered fierce friendships. It is a venue where my scholarship has had room to grow, and where I’ve been able to develop the practice-based research that is so central to Ishtyle. I’m humbled by and grateful for this award. Moreover I am excited for what it signals more broadly; it suggests to me that queer people of color’s pursuit of pleasure and aesthetic life can occupy a central episteme within our field.” - Professor Kareem Khubchandani
Congratulations, as well, to Dr David Calder (Lecturer in Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Manchester) whose ‘Street Theatre in a State of Exception: Performing in Public after Bataclan’, published in Contemporary Theatre Review, received an Honourable Mention for Outstanding Article in a Journal. Contemporary Theatre Review is co-edited from and supported by Central.
Dr Kate Elswit, Central’s Reader in Theatre and Performance and author of the award-winning books Watching Weimar Dance (2014) and Theatre & Dance (2018), has also been nominated for the ATHE-ASTR’s Award for Excellence in Digital Scholarship. She and her fellow researchers (international co-investigator Harmony Bench and postdoctoral research assistants Tia-Monique Uzor and Antonio Jimenez-Mavillard) team have been nominated for Dunham’s Data: Katherine Dunham and Digital Methods for Dance Historical Inquiry. Winners of the ATHE-ASTR Award for Excellence in Digital Scholarship will be announced in November.
Find out more information about the Association for Theatre in Higher Education and explore the full list of 2021 ATHE Award winners by visiting their website.
