Day 1: Wednesday 14 May 2025
Details of the first day of the conference are to be finalised, but will include two industry panels featuring leading songwriters, directors and choreographers for stage and screen. There will also be a special display of the treasures of the Music Division of the Library of Congress, focusing on the achievements and contributions of women.
Day 2: Thursday 15 May 2025
9:00-10:30: SESSION 1: Women of the American Musical in the collections of the Library of Congress
Megan Woller: “A first rate singing, dancing, entertaining encyclopedia of Musical Comedy”: Sylvia Fine’s Musical Comedy Tonight Series
Elea Proctor: Lessons from the Archive: Rethinking John W. Isham’s Black Chorus Girls
Alex Badue: “Maid for Broadway”: Jeanine Teosori’s Score for Caroline, or Change
10:30-11:00: Coffee
11:00-13:00: SESSION 2: Reclaiming Women of the American Musical
Sunny Stalter-Pace: Remembering Albertina Rasch
Kathryn Edney: Beyond Bloody Mary: Researching the Archives for Juanita Hall
Ellen Peck: “Hey, Look Me Over!”: Carolyn Leigh’s American Songbook
Becky Potter: Trude Rittmann
13:00-13:30: Lunch
13:30-15:30: SESSION 3: Black Feminist Approaches to Musical Theatre
Jordan Ealey: The (Drama)turgy of Black Life: Zora Neale Hurston’s Experiments in Sound
La Donna Forsgren: Black Girl Fairytales on the Musical Theatre Stage
Hannah Thuraisingam Robbins: Intersectionality in the Age of Exceptionalism
Respondent: Michelle Scott
15:30-16:00: Coffee
16:00-18:00: SESSION 4: Women on Screen
Virginia Jansen: “Strife! And Tribulation!”: Refiguring gender and race in America’s “Golden Age” of musical theater through the women of Schmigadoon
Kelly Kessler: From the Teachers’ Lounge to Television: American Musical Theater and the Forgotten Small Screen Legacy of Ethel Burn
Adrienne McLean: Better than Everybody: Eleanor Powell and the Quandaries of Female Authorship in the Hollywood Musical
Hannah Lewis: “Lord Help the Sister Who Comes Between Me and My Man”: The Performance of Femininity in White Christmas (1954)
Day 3: Friday 16 May 2025
9:00-11:00: SESSION 4: Women and Identity
Amanda Lee Morrill: Every Tudor Rose Has Its Thorns”: Whitestream, Mean Girl Feminism in SIX
Catherine M Young: Sex and ‘Stuckness’: The Mobility and Immobilization of Women in In the Heights
Sam Yates: “Stealing from the Cookie Jar”: Women Modeling Disability in Sondheim’s Anyone Can Whistle
Donatella Galella: “They Don’t Know”: Thoroughly Modern Millie and Ironic Racism
11:00-11:30: Coffee
11:30-13:00: SESSION 6: Women, Voice, Power
Gregory Camp: “I can sing everything from popular music to grand opera”: Deanna Durbin, Power, and Musical Structure
Nathan Platte: Behind the Bamboo Tree: Listening to Sally Benson’s Meet Me in St. Louis
Kristen Turner Unruly Women and Respectable Ladies: Vocal Timbre and Stock Characters in Early Musical Comedies
13:00-14:00: Lunch
14:00-15:30: SESSION 7: Groundbreaking Women in Production, Writing and Marketing
Dean Adams: women as producers [title TBC]
Samantha Lampe: How Do You Solve a Problem Like Evita? Mary Bryant’s Marketing Strategy
Shoshana Greenberg: Inner City [title TBC]
15:30-16:00: Coffee
16:00-17:00 SESSION 8: Women as Directors and Choreographers
Laura MacDonald: American musical theatre at Glyndebourne: Diane Paulus’s Carmen (2024)
Mary Jo Lodge: The Last (Twenty)Five Years: Women Directors and Director/Choreographers on Broadway
17:00-17:30: Stacy Wolf + Dominic Broomfield-McHugh – closing discussion + wrap-up