The Comparative Drama Conference bestows two awards every year.
The Joel Tansey Memorial Award for Graduate Student Travel
to the Comparative Drama Conference
The Comparative Drama Conference is pleased to announce this award, established in 2016, and presented in memory of Joel Tansey, award-winning scholar, writer, professor of French Literature, and Assistant Editor of Text & Presentation (2008-11). Any graduate student who presents a paper at the conference is eligible for consideration. Interested applicants should submit a full-length version (15-25 pages) of their research paper, as a Word attachment, to the Editor of the special Comparative Drama Conference edition of Comparative Drama, Amy Muse, Ammuse@stthomas.edu, by 24 June following the conference. The winning paper will be published with special recognition in Comparative Drama. The winner will also be honored at the next year’s conference, where she or he will receive the monetary award to help cover conference travel expenses.
Tansey Award Winners
2023–Nicholas Duddy, “Arthur Miller’s Suicidology of the Stage: Suicide and Dramatic Form in Death of a Salesman,” Comparative Drama Vol. 58. Issue 1
2022–Conference not held
2021–Ian Downes, “The Embodied Cartoon: The Move Toward Universal in Anne Washburn’s Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play,” Text and Presentation, 2021.
2020–COVID-19 Wins
2019–Michael Schweikardt, “Deep When: A Basic Design Philosophy for Addressing Holidays in Historical Dramas” Text and Presentation, 2019.
2018–Kevin Lucas “August Strindberg, Amiri Baraka and the Radicalization of Domestic Tragedy” Text and Presentation, 2018.
2017–Mark Scott “Irreconcilable Differences: Charles I, Henrietta Maria, and Jones and Townshend’s Court Masques” Text and Presentation, 2017.
2016–Ariel Sibert “Identifying with Presence, Absence and Identity in Laurie Anderson and Mohammed el Gharani’s Habeus Corpus” Text and Presentation, 2016.
The Anthony Ellis Prize for the Best Paper by a Graduate Student
In memory of Tony Ellis, a board member, valued friend, and committed mentor to graduate students, the Comparative Drama Conference is pleased to announce the Anthony Ellis Prize for Best Paper by a Graduate Student. Any graduate student who presented a paper at the conference is eligible for consideration. Interested applicants should submit a full-length version (15-25 pages) of his/her research paper to the Editor of the special Comparative Drama Conference edition of Comparative Drama by 24 June following the conference. The winning paper will be published with special recognition in Comparative Drama. The winner will also be honored at the next year’s conference, where he/she will have the conference registration fee waived and will receive one night’s free hotel room and a monetary award to help with additional conference expenses. Please email submissions as Word attachments to the editor, Amy Muse, AMMUSE@stthomas.edu, by 24 June following the conference.
Ellis Prize Recipients
2023–Mark Scott, “‘In this show let me an actor be’: Joining in with Doctor Faustus”, Comparative Drama Vol. 58, Iss. 1
2022–Conference not held
2021–Lee Conderacci, “‘Shakespeare’s #MeToo Play’? Shakespeare and Sexual Politics on the Contemporary Stage,” Text and Presentation, 2021
2020–COVID-19 Wins
2019–Victorian Lynn Scrimer “Radical Resurrections: A Performance History of John Brown’s Body,” Text and Presentation, 2019.
2018–Victoria Lynn Scrimer “Performing a Postmodern Prometheus: Percy Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound from Page to Stage,” Text and Presentation, 2018.
2017–Mary Lutze “Challenging Accessibility: The ‘Radical Deaf Theatre’ of Aaron Sawyer’s The Vineyard,” Text and Presentation, 2017.
2016 — Beck Holden “Signifyin’ Sam: Motivated Signifyin(g) and Future Nostalgia in Post-Reconstruction Black Musicals,” Text and Presentation, 2016.
2015 – Lydia Craig, “Politic Silence: Female Choruses in Lochhead’s Medea and Wertenbaker’s The Love of the Nightingale,” Text and Presentation, 2015
2014 – Giuseppe Sofo, “Translating Tempests: A Reading of Aimé Césaire’s Une Tempête in Translation,” Text and Presentation, 2014
Previously Awarded
The Philadelphia Constantinidis Essay in Critical Theory Award
Philadelphia A. Constantinidis (1912-1982), was born in Artaki, lived in Thessaloniki, and died in Athens. She was the youngest child of a wealthy merchant who lost everything that he owned when the Greek-Anatolians were driven out of their homeland in 1922. She was a survivor of the First World War, the Greek-Turkish war, the Second World War, and the Greek Civil War. Her husband died from an old wound in 1950 and she raised her two sons alone. Her oldest son was killed in 1983. She often expressed her philosophy of life with a quote from a Greek play: “ἄνδρα δ᾽ ὠφελεῖν ἐφ᾽ ὧν ἔχοι τε καὶ δύναιτο κάλλιστος πόνων” (ΟΙΔΙΠΟΥΣ ΤΥΡΑΝΝΟΣ, 314-315). She occasionally replaced the word “ἄνδρα” (man) with the word “γυνή” (woman).
Previous Constantinidis Award recipients
2021–Phillip Zapkin (Pennsylvania State University), “Ubuntu Theater: Building a Human World in Yael Farber’s Molora” in PMLA, volume 136, issue 3: 386-400.
2020 Anastasia Stavroula Valtadorou (University of Edinburgh), “Erôs in Pieces (?): Tragic Erôs in Euripides’ Fragmentary Andromeda and Antigone” in Greek Drama V. Studies in the Theatre of the Fifth and Fourth Centuries BCE, edited by Hallie Marshall and C.W. Marshall, London: Bloomsbury: 115-28.
Part of the tradition of the conference has been for the winner of the Constantinidis Award to address the assembled body and give a five-minute summation of their work. The pandemic made this impossible this year. Since Dr. Valtadorou did not have a platform to share her comments in person, we offer them here instead:
I am extremely honoured to accept the Constantinidis award for my paper “Erôs in Pieces (?): Tragic Erôs in Euripides’ Fragmentary Andromeda and Antigone”, an award dedicated to the memory of a great woman and given to many distinguished scholars in the past, such as Toph Marshall, Gonda Van Steen and Marilynn Richtarik, among others. In this essay, I have set out to explore tragic eros (‘erotic desire’) and I argue that it is more multifarious than commonly accepted. More specifically, I have focused on, and explore comparatively, Euripides’ fragmentary Antigone (420–406 BC) and Euripides’ Andromeda (412 BC), which both present young male characters falling in love with their future brides. As I show in detail, these dramas present us with examples of heterosexual couples whose eros does not end in disaster, but in a wedding; in both plays a young couple, after triumphing over formidable obstacles, will marry, have children and, in all likelihood, live happily together. Not only does eros not destroy, but it even leads to the establishment of a new oikos. Therefore, the exploration of these lost plays, and their comparison with other well-known dramas, allows for an important re-evaluation of Greek tragedy and its limits as a genre.
2019 The committee determined that none of the nominated papers met the award requirements.
2018 Marilynn Richtarik (Georgia State University), “Reality and Justice: Seamus Heaney’s The Cure at Troy,” Estudios Irlandeses 13 (2018): 98-112.
2017 The committee determined that none of the nominated papers met the award requirements.
2016 The committee determined that none of the nominated papers met the award requirements.
2015 C. W. “Toph” Marshall (University of British Columbia), “Performance Reception and the Cambridge Greek Play: Aristophanes’ Frogs in 1936 and 1947.” Classical Receptions Journal 7/2 (2015): 177-202.
2014 Peter E. Portmann (University of Manchester), “Arabs and Aristophanes, Menander among the Muslims: Greek Humor in the Medieval and Modern Middle East.” International Journal of the Classical Tradition 21/1 (2014): 1-29.
2013 Gonda Van Steen (University of Florida), “The Story of Ali Retzo: Brechtian Theatre in Greece under the Military Dictatorship.” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 31/1 (2013): 85-115.
2012 Loren Kruger (University of Chicago), “On the Tragedy of the Commoner: Elektra, Orestes, and Others in South Africa.” Comparative Drama 46/3 (2012): 355-377.
2011 Robert Davis (City University of New York), “Is Mr. Euripides a Communist? The Federal Theatre Project’s 1938 Trojan Incident.” Comparative Drama 44/4 (2010) and 45/1 (2011): 423-440.
2010 Amanda Wrigley (Open University, UK), “A Wartime Radio Odyssey: Edward Sackville-West and Benjamin Britten’s The Rescue (1943).” The Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast and Audio Media 8/2 (2010): 81-104.
2009 Melinda Powers (John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York), “Unveiling Euripides.” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 23/2 (2009): 5-19.
2008 The committee determined that none of the nominated papers met the award requirements.
2007 The committee determined that none of the nominated papers met the award requirements.
2006 Kelly Younger (Loyola Marymount University,) “Irish Antigones: Burying the Colonial System.” Colloquy: text theory critique 11 (2006): n.p.