Annette J. Saddik is Professor of English and Theatre at New York City College of Technology and the CUNY Graduate Center Doctoral Program in Theatre. Her area of specialization is twentieth- and twenty-first-century drama and performance, particularly the work of Tennessee Williams. She is the author of Contemporary American Drama (2007), a history of the postmodern performance of American identity on the stage since World War Two, and The Politics of Reputation: The Critical Reception of Tennessee Williams' Later Plays (1999), and has edited and introduced a collection of Williams' previously unpublished later plays, The Traveling Companion and Other Plays (2008). In addition, she has published essays on theater in journals such as Modern Drama, The Drama Review (TDR), North Carolina Literary Review, Études Théâtrales, South Atlantic Review, Tennessee Williams Annual Review, and Valley Voices, as well as numerous critical anthologies and encyclopedias of theater history. Dr. Saddik is also working on a new book on Williams, The Strange, The Crazed, The Queer: Tennessee Williams' Late Plays and the Theater of Excess, and has forthcoming essays on the work on Sam Shepard and John Patrick Shanley. She serves on the editorial boards of the journals Theatre Topics and the Tennessee Williams Annual Review.
ENG 1101, ENG 1201,ENG 2000, ENG 2002, ENG 3402, ENG 3403
Ph.D., M.A., B.A.: Rutgers University
Twentieth- and twenty-first century drama, modernism/postmodernism, performance theory, women’s performance art, Tennessee Williams, Sam Shepard, Antonin Artaud.
Books:
Tennessee Williams: The Traveling Companion and Other Plays, editor and introduction. (New York: New Directions Publishing, 2008).
Contemporary American Drama (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press [Distributed by Columbia University Press in the U.S.], 2007).
The Politics of Reputation: The Critical Reception of Tennessee Williams' Later Plays (London: Associated University Presses, 1999).
Select Essays:
“The Exploration of Gendered Creativity in Tennessee Williams’s Last Broadway Play.” Tennessee Williams Annual Review, forthcoming 2011.
“Sex, Lies, and 35mm Film: The Past as Present in Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love.” In Modern American Drama on Screen, ed. Robert Bray and Barton Palmer. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2011.
“‘Too Grotesque and Too Funny for Laughter’: Publishing the Late Tennessee Williams”.“ In Tenn at 100, ed. David Kaplan. East Brunswick, NJ: Hansen Publishing Group, forthcoming 2011.
“‘Something about the Deep South of America and London’s East End’:Tennessee Williams’s Late Plays and In-Yer-Face Theatre.” Valley Voices 10:1 (Spring 2010): 58-71.
Contributor to the Encyclopedia of Broadway and American Culture (2 Entries: Angels in America: Parts One and Two and “Tennessee Williams”), ed. Thomas A. Greenfield. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2010: 31-34; 691-94.
“Recovering ‘Moral and Sexual Chaos’ in Tennessee Williams’ Clothes for a Summer Hotel.” North Carolina Literary Review, number 18 (2009): 53-65.
Contributor to Encyclopedia of Contemporary LGBTQ Literature of the United States (Entry: “Tennessee Williams”), ed. Emmanuel Nelson. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2009.
“Image, Myth, and Movement in the Plays of Sam Shepard and Tennessee Williams.” In The Influence of Tennessee Williams: Essays on Fifteen American Playwrights. Ed. Philip C. Kolin. McFarland & Co., 2008: 106-121.
“Critical Expectations and Assumptions: Williams’ Later Reputation and the American Reception of the Avant-Garde.” In Bloom’s Modern Critical Views: Tennessee Williams. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 2007: 123-142.
“`Blueprints for the Reconstruction’: Postmodern Possibility in Stairs to the Roof,” Tennessee Williams Annual Review (2007): 67-75.
"`The Inexpressible Regret of All Her Regrets': Tennessee Williams's Later Plays as Artaudian Theater of Cruelty," Rpt. in 20th-Century American Drama: Volume Two, ed. Brenda Murphy and Laurie C.J. Cella, London: Routledge, 2006: 289-309
“The (Un)Represented Fragmentation of the Body in Tennessee Williams’‘Desire and the Black Masseur’ and Suddenly Last Summer.” Rpt. in Short Story Criticism, volume 83: Criticism of the Works of Short Fiction Writers, ed. Thomas J. Shoenberg. Detroit, MI: Gale, 2005.
“`You Just Forge Ahead’: Image, Authenticity, and Freedom in the Plays of Tennessee Williams and Sam Shepard,” South Atlantic Review 70:4 (Fall 2005): 73-93.
Invited essay on Williams’ Suddenly Last Summer for the Programme of the 2004 production at England’s Lyceum Theatre, featuring Diana Rigg and Victoria Hamilton.
"Rap’s Unruly Body: The Postmodern Performance of Black Male Identity on the American Stage," TDR: the journal of performance studies 47:4 (Winter 2003):110-27.
Contributor to the Tennessee Williams Encyclopedia (4 entries: “Samuel Beckett”;“Yukio Mishima”; “Harold Pinter”; I Can’t Imagine Tomorrow), ed. Philip C. Kolin. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004.
"Performing the American Dream: Postmodern Blurrings of Myth and Reality in the Work of David Mamet and Sam Shepard," Études Théâtrales/Essays in Theatre 20:2 (May 2002): 103-112.
"`The Inexpressible Regret of All Her Regrets': Tennessee Williams's Later Plays as Artaudian Theater of Cruelty." In The Undiscovered Country. Ed. Philip C. Kolin. New York: Peter Lang, 2002: 5-24.
"The (Un)Represented Fragmentation of the Body in Tennessee Williams' `Desire and the Black Masseur' and Suddenly Last Summer." Modern Drama 41 (Fall 1998): 347-354.
