Loyola University Chicago

Department of English

Verna Foster

Professor Emerita

 
  • Office Location: Crown Center 419
  • Phone Number: 773.508.2251
  • E-mail: vfoster@luc.edu

About

Offices Held:

  • Book Review Editor, Text & Presentation (2000-2015)
  • Member, Board of the Comparative Drama Conference
  • Member, Editorial Board, Text & Presentation

Degrees

  • BA (1967), M.Phil. (1970), and Ph.D. (1977), University of London

Program Areas

  • Modern Drama
  • Contemporary Dramatic Adaptations
  • Contemporary Women Dramatists
  • Comparative Drama
  • Dramatic Theory
  • Shakespeare

Selected Publications

Books:

  • Editor, Dramatic Revisions of Myths, Fairy Tales and Legends: Essays on Recent Plays. McFarland & Company, Inc., 2012.
  • The Name and Nature of Tragicomedy. Ashgate, 2004.

Recent:

  • “White Woods and Blue Jasmine: Woody Allen Rewrites A Streetcar Named Desire.” Literature/Film Quarterly, vol. 43, no. 3, 2015, pp.188-201.
  • "Why Does Mary Queen of Scots Always Get Her Head Chopped Off?" Edited by Amelia Howe Kritzer and Miriam Lopez Rodriguez. Woman on Trial: Gender and the Accused Woman in Plays from Ancient Greece to the Contemporary Stage. Teneo Press, 2015, pp. 137-56.
  • "After Chekhov: The Three Sisters of Beth Henley, Wendy Wasserstein, Timberlake Wertenbaker and Blake Morrison." Comparative Drama, vol. 47, no. 4, Winter 2013.
  • “Beth Henley’s Abundance: The Cinematic Myth of the Wild West Revised.” Dramatic Revisions of Myths, Fairy Tales and Legends: Essays on Recent Plays. Edited by Verna A. Foster. McFarland & Company, Inc., 2012. 
  • “Liz Lochhead’s Dracula: Revision and Reception.” Text & Presentation, 2011, The Comparative Drama Conference, Series 8. Edited by Kiki Gounaridou. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2012.
  • "Reinventing Isabelle Eberhardt:  Rereading Timberlake Wertenbaker's New Anatomies."  Connotations, vol. 17, no. 1, 2007/2008, pp. 109-128.
  • "The Symbiosis of Desire and Death: Beth Henley Rewrites Tennessee Williams."  The Influence of Tennessee Williams on the American Stage: Essays on 15 Playwrights.  Edited by Philip C. Kolin. McFarland, 2008.
  • "Nurturing and Murderous Mothers in Suzan-Lori Parks's In the Blood and Fucking A." American Drama, vol. 16, no. 1, Winter 2007, pp. 75-89.
  • "Suzan-Lori Parks's Staging of the Lincoln Myth in The America Play and Topdog/Underdog." JADT (Journal of American Drama and Theatre), vol. 17, no. 3, Fall 2005, pp. 24-35.
  • "Anxieties and Influences: The Presence of Shaw in Kushner's Angels in America." SHAW, vol. 22, 2002.
  • "Waiting for Buddy, Or Just Going On in A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur." The Undiscovered Country: The Later Plays of Tennessee Williams. Edited by Philip C. Kolin. Lang, 2002.

Works-in-Progress:

  • Essay. “Meta-melodrama: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins Appropriates Dion Boucicault’s The Octoroon.”
  • Essay on recent dramatic revisions of the Medea myth.