My work as an artist-scholar examines the intersections of myth, gender studies, environmental studies, orality, and performance.
I have presented my research at conferences in the U.S. and the U.K., including the International Congress for Celtic Studies, the Fulbright Forum at Southampton University, the Storytelling and the Environment Forum at the University of South Wales, and the New York Musical Theatre Forum.
Publications
Watkins, Emma, and Stacy Wolf. “Feminist Musical Theatre Pedagogy.” In Teaching Critical Performance Theory: In Today’s Theatre Classroom, Studio, and Communities, ed. by Jeanmarie Higgins, 12. London ; New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2020.
Through the lens of a classroom discussion about the musical Oklahoma!, this chapter explores the practice and benefits of a feminist lens in the study of musical theatre history. Offering a multi-generational perspective, the chapter speaks to the evolution of musical theatre scholarship and its engagement with inclusivity and intersectionality on Broadway stages. Undergraduate theatre programs have an opportunity and an obligation to study, and indeed, to model a more diverse future for musical theatre. A feminist perspective provides an essential lens through which to study one of America’s most popular artistic forms, with an eye towards how gender, race, sexuality, and class have been scripted and performed throughout history. In this curriculum, undergraduates use their knowledge of what musical theatre has been historically in order to imagine what it might become in the future.
Selected Papers
(Re)Creating Myth: Adapting Welsh Tales through Storytelling Performances and Playwriting
Fulbright Forum at Southampton University (2019)
Calumniated Storytellers: The Precedent for Female Re-Telling
International Congress of Celtic Studies at Bangor University (2019)
The Mabinogi’s Modern Environment: Re-Staging the Four Branches in Contemporary Wales
Storytelling and the Environment Symposium with George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling at University of South Wales (2019)
Emma Catherine Watkins 