Joshua Polster

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. His forthcoming book Arthur Miller in Context will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2027.

Polster’s 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.