Embracing the “Foggy Place” of Theatre History: The Chautauqua/Colloquia Model of Public Scholarship as Performance

In her December 2013 Slate polemic “The End of the College Essay: An Essay,” Rebecca Schuman calls for the end of assigning and grading papers in required courses. Since “the baccalaureate is the new high-school diploma” and “students (and their parents) view college as professional training,” professors should “declare unconditional defeat” and abandon the dated notion that writing essays is a necessary part of a decent undergraduate education. As a theatre historian with training in rhetoric and composition, I have incorporated numerous student-centered writing strategies in theatre history, literature, and theory courses, but ultimately I have taken a similar stance when discussing departmental curricula with my colleagues: I question the value of traditional (that is, reader-oriented and paper-based) research/writing assignments within the major.