about SUSAN GLASPELL Sept. 28, 2005
by Jan Lisa Huttner
IWPA Members
and Friends Invited to Learn More
about SUSAN GLASPELL Sept. 28, 2005
by Jan Lisa Huttner
Linda Ben-Zvi, Professor of Theatre Studies at Tel Aviv University, is coming
to Chicago on Wednesday, September 28, to read from her new book SUSAN GLASPELL:
Her Life and Times. This two-hour evening program will be presented at the
new University Center, located at the corner of State & Congress (catty-corner
from the Harold Washington Library Center) from 7 to 9 p.m. Admission is free,
and open to all interested members of the general public.
In her June 30th article on Professor Ben-Zvi's new book, New York Times
critic Dinitia Smith wrote: "Susan Glaspell was the second woman to
win the Pulitzer Prize for drama. She was a founder of the Provincetown Players
and is credited with discovering Eugene O'Neill. Her novels were best sellers.
So why is she practically unknown in 2005?"
But Glaspell is far from "unknown" here in the Midwest where her work
is a curricular staple on many campuses. Nor is her work "unknown"
to the many members of IWPA who attended our Silver Anniversary celebration
for A Jury of Her Peers (the Academy Award-nominated film based on Glaspell's
best known story), held at the Chicago Cultural Center last March.
Although Glaspell is typically referred to as "an Iowa writer," most
Midwesterners think of Davenport, her hometown, as one of the "Quad Cities"
which sit squarely on the Iowa/Illinois border. Therefore, not surprisingly,
Chicago plays a considerable role in her biography, beginning in 1903 when she
enrolled as a graduate student at the University of Chicago. Several of her
early short stories are set in Chicago, as are several of her novels including
The Glory of the Conquered, The Visioning, and Norma Ashe. Between
1936 and 1938, she was the head of the Midwest Playwrights' Bureau of the Federal
Theater Project, responsible for initiating and supporting many plays staged
here during this period. She also wrote several of her later books while living
in Chicago near her brother, who resided here.
Journalist, novelist, playwright, and arts administrator, Glaspell created intrepid
female characters, and, according to Professor Ben-Zvi, she "launched an
indigenous American drama that addressed pressing topics such as women's suffrage,
birth control, female sexuality, marriage equality, socialism, and pacifism."
Linda Ben-Zvi is Professor of Theatre Studies at Tel Aviv University and Professor
Emerita of English and Theatre at Colorado State University.
She received her B.A. in English and Philosophy from Boston University, her
M.A. in English from New York University, and her Ph.D. in English from the
University of Oklahoma. She has also received fellowships from the Library of
Congress, the National Endowment for the Humanities; and the Newberry Library.
In addition to Susan Glaspell: Her Life and Times, Professor Ben-Zvi
is also the author of Drawing on Beckett: Portraits, Performances, and Cultural
Contexts, Susan Glaspell: Essays on Her Theater and Fiction, Theater in Israel,
and Women in Beckett: Performance and Critical Perspectives.
Come meet Professor Ben-Zvi on September 9, 2005, and find out more about Susan
Glaspell, the remarkable woman considered a role model for the ages by current
members of the Illinois Woman's Press Association.
IWPA member Jan Lisa Huttner is the managing editor of FILMS FOR TWO: The Online Guide for Busy Couples (www.films42.com). She has given presentations all across Illinois on Sally Heckel's 1980 film adaptation of A Jury of Her Peers.