During the review period, I served on graduate committees for five MFA Design students. I continue to serve on a committee for an English PhD Candidate working on Shakespeare’s Romances; this student passed comprehensive exams and advanced to candidacy in 2019. I facilitated an independent study on Postcolonial Theatre for an undergraduate student (THR 490, Spring 2019) and supervised a graduate student’s work as a TA for Theatre History (THR 890, Fall 2019).
I have continued to work on regularizing mentorship of student dramaturgs in THR 300C, supervising a team of two student dramaturgs on Oklahoma!; an experienced student dramaturg on A Wrinkle in Time and Frankenstein; and a new student dramturg on Twelfth Night.
I supervised three Honors Options for THR 431 in Spring 2019: a jukebox musical proposal; a jukebox musical script; and a research paper on theatre in China under the Cultural Revolution.
I completed my fellowship in the Walter and Pauline Adams Academy of Instructional Excellence and Innovation. My online teaching portfolio developed through this program is available here: https://smit2030.msu.domains/teaching/
The period under review includes two sections of THR 431 for upper-level undergraduate Theatre majors, and two graduate courses. I also taught an online section of THR 336 during the summer session.
THR 431 in Spring 2019 was a very successful iteration of the course. A new unit on Musical Theatre Historiography culminated in a jukebox musical proposal project that engaged students in using rhetorical argument to engage with Theatre Studies as creative artists. Units on Greek Tragedy and Intercultural Theatre helped students contextualize the department production of The Bacchae.
The Fall 2020 version of THR 431 was a return to past practice, with some minor changes. I added The Oresteia to the Greek tragedy unit in an effort to improve on past issues with the Greek tragedy pitch project by ensuring students were familiar with at least three plays. This may have led to too much scaffolding for the first project. Students were unprepared for the Production History research project’s more open-ended expectations. Though I pointed out several times that the more open-ended instructions were intentional, I ultimately felt obligated to create clearer expectations and offer a model presentation. SIRS comments suggest that students wanted different things from the course: it was too easy for one student, but there was too much reading for another.
THR 832 was an excellent iteration of this course, and student work was generally strong. The pedagogy focus for the first section of the course is effective in relation to the overall MFA curriculum. I will take student feedback with regard to scheduling presentations and consistency of reading load into account as I plan for THR 831 in Spring 2021. I think I can raise my expectations around students taking control of classroom management and how class time is spent, and will adjust presentation assignments accordingly.