ASTR State of the Profession Plenary (Esther Kim Lee)
ASTR Report
Conference on Doctoral Program in Theatre and Performance Studies
September 18-19, 2009 – University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)
Faculty representing nearly 40 of the Ph.D. programs in Theatre and Performance Studies from the U.S. and Canada gathered for a landmark meeting at UIUC on the state of doctoral training. The conference was supported by the UIUC Department of Theatre, the UIUC Department of Dance, the UIUC School of Fine and Applied Arts, the UIUC Graduate College, and by the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR).
Most of the sessions were closed to the public so the faculty members could frankly discuss the challenges and opportunities facing current doctoral students in Theatre and Performance Studies. There were two open sessions. In the first of these open sessions, conference organizer Esther Kim Lee led a panel that presented data culled from an extensive survey completed by the PhD program heads. This survey touched upon issues such as time to degree, diversity, core requirements, and the number of graduate students in the U.S. and Canada that are currently pursuing a PhD in our field. (This number—a staggering 677—sparked a universal concern that resounded throughout the two-day meeting.) The second open session was a keynote address by Thomas Postlewait, titled “Yet Another New Atlantis: A Sketch of Our Discipline.”
The conference consisted of three closed sessions on Curriculum, Employment, and Advocacy, respectively. The Curriculum session broke out into discussions of current practices related to issues of core competency, assessment, and integration of pedagogy and practice. A recurrent theme was the apparent shift in emphasis from content requirements to methodological requirements in doctoral training.
The Employment session chairs devoted significant time to discussing the current economic climate and the ethical issues surrounding doctoral training for what we expect to be a changed academic landscape in the coming years. The concept of a “research institution” seems to be in danger in various regions, and the faculty positions that are most widely available at present may not allow our PhDs to pursue their research beyond the dissertation. We also brainstormed about survival skills for our students, issues of size, the merits and challenges of interdisciplinary studies, the changing job market over the past ten years, and career counseling.
The Advocacy session chairs engaged the group in discussions of political economy, outreach, activism, and other forms of engagement with communities beyond the academy, as well as the increasingly formalized grant structure that governs the funding of such projects. A recurrent theme was training our students in leadership skills, internationalism, and “world theatre.”
The conference closed with questions of how the Ph.D. programs in Theatre and Performance Studies from the U.S. and Canada want to collectively represent themselves and empower themselves. It was decided that this group would be called the Consortium of Doctoral Programs in Theatre and Performance Studies, and that this consortium would commit to meeting again within the next three years. In the meantime, a volunteer task force consisting of Esther Kim Lee, Charlotte Canning, and Emily Roxworthy agreed to serve the consortium. President Tracy Davis then discussed ASTR’s shared commitment to the goals expressed by the gathered faculty, and agreed that the task force would next meet at the annual meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico, this November.
Respectfully submitted,
Emily Roxworthy, Esther Kim Lee, and Charlotte Canning
Task Force, Consortium of Doctoral Programs in Theatre and Performance Studies
Filed under Announcements. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
