Drama Expert - Harry Elam

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Harry J. Elam, Jr.
Olive H. Palmer Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Drama, Director of the Institute for Diversity in the Arts, Robert and Ruth Halperine University Fellow and Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education

Biography

Professor Elam's scholarly work focuses on contemporary American drama, particularly African American and Chicano theater. In addition to his scholarly work, he has directed theatre professionally for more than eighteen years. Most notably, he has directed several of August Wilson’s plays, including Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Two Trains Running, and Fences, the latter of which won eight Bay Area “Choice” Awards.

Harry J. Elam, Jr. is the Olive H. Palmer Professor in the Humanities, the Robert and Ruth Halperin University Fellow for Undergraduate Education, Director of the Institute for Diversity in the Arts, and Director of the Committee on Black Performing Arts.

Prof. Elam is the author of Taking it to the Streets: The Social Protest Theater of Luis Valdez and Amiri Baraka; The Past as Present in the Drama of August Wilson (winner of the 2005 Errol Hill Award from the American Society of Theatre Research); and co-editor of four books, African American Performance and Theater History: A Critical Reader (winner of the 2001 Errol Hill Award from the American Society of Theatre Research); Colored Contradictions: An Anthology of Contemporary African American Drama; The Fire This Time: African American Plays for the New Millennium; and Black Cultural Traffic: Crossroads in Performance and Popular Culture.  His articles have appeared in American Theater, American Drama, Modern Drama, Theatre Journal, Text and Performance Quarterly, as well as journals in Belgium, Israel, Poland, and Taiwan.  He has also written essays published in several critical anthologies.  Elam is the outgoing editor of Theatre Journal and on the editorial boards of Atlantic Studies, Journal of American Drama and Theatre, and Modern Drama. 

In 2006, Elam was the winner of the Betty Jones Award for Outstanding Teaching from the American Theatre and Drama Society, the winner of the Excellence in Editing Award from the Association of Theatre in Higher Education, and the winner of the Distinguished Scholar Award from the American Society of Theatre Research.  He was inducted into the College of Fellows of the American Theatre in April 2006.

At Stanford he has been awarded five different teaching awards: the ASSU Award for Undergraduate Teaching, Small Classes (1992); the Humanities and Sciences Dean’s Distinguished Teaching Award (1993); the Black Community Service Center Outstanding Teacher Award (1994); the Bing Teaching Fellowship for Undergraduate Teaching (1994-1997); and the Rhodes Prize for Undergraduate Teaching (1998). He has taught at Stanford since 1990, and is the former director of the Introduction to the Humanities program.

Elam’s directing résumé includes Tod, the Boy Tod by Talvin Wilks for the Oakland Ensemble Company, and for TheatreWorks in Palo Alto, Jar the Floor by Cheryl West and Blues for an Alabama Sky by Pearl Cleage, which was nominated for nine Bay Area Circle Critics Awards and was winner of DramaLogue Awards for Best Production, Best Design, Best Ensemble Cast, and Best Direction.

Elam is now the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education (VPUE).

 

Key Works

  • The Past as Present in the Drama of August Wilson. University of Michigan, 2006.
  • Taking it to the Streets: The Social Protest Theater of Luis Valdez and Amiri Baraka. University of Michigan Press, 2001.
  • The Fire This Time: African American Plays for the New Millennium. Co-Ed With Robert Alexander. Theatre Communications Group, 2002.
  • Black Cultural Traffic: Crossroads in Performance and Popular Culture. Co-Ed. With Kennell Jackson. University of Michigan, 2005.
  • African American Performance and Theater History: A Critical Reader. With David Krasner. Oxford University Press, 2001.
  • Colored Contradictions: An Anthology of Contemporary African American Drama. With Robert Alexander. Plume Publishers, 1996.

 

Prof. Elam in the News