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Dr. Joshua Polster teaches courses in theatre history, dramatic theory, education, cinema, playwriting and dramaturgy, as well as courses for the Emerson Prison Initiative. He is a recipient of Emerson College's Distinguished Faculty Award. Polster’s books include Stages of Engagement: U.S. Theatre and Performance 1898-1949, The Routledge Anthology of U.S. Drama, Reinterpreting the Plays of Arthur Miller, and Methuen Drama’s critical editions of Arthur Miller’s A Memory of Two Mondays and Incident at Vichy. Polster's forthcoming book Arthur Miller in Context will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2027. His articles on theatre and performance have appeared in several journals and books, and have been presented at numerous international conferences. His scholarship earned him an American Theatre and Drama Society Fellow, a Michael Quinn Writing Award, and a Modern Language Quarterly grant. Polster has directed or assistant directed critically acclaimed plays in London and Chicago. He was the Assistant Director of the Nuffield Theatre in Southampton, England, the Assistant Artistic Administrator at the Goodman Theatre, and the founding Artistic Director of the Steep Theatre Company in Chicago.

About

Education

B.S., Ohio University
M.A., Ohio University
Ph.D., University of Washington

Publications

Reinterpreting the Plays of Arthur Miller

2010

Critical Edition of Arthur Miller's A Memory of Two Mondays

2011

Stages of Engagement: U.S. Theatre and Performance from 1898-1949

2015

The Routledge Anthology of U.S. Drama, editor

2016

Critical Edition of Arthur Miller’s Incident at Vichy

2022

Awards & Honors

Mann Stearns Distinguished Faculty Award

2011