Harry J. Elam

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Harry J. Elam

Freeman-Thornton Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, Olive H. Palmer Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Drama, Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education

Bio

Harry J. Elam, Jr. is the Freeman-Thornton Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, the Olive H. Palmer Professor in the Humanities, and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University.

He is author of Taking It to the Streets: The Social Protest Theater of Luis Valdez and Amiri Baraka and the Erroll Hill Prize-winning The Past as Present in the Drama of August Wilson, and co-editor of five books, African American Performance and Theater History: A Critical Reader, Colored Contradictions: An Anthology of Contemporary African American Drama, The Fire This Time: African American Plays for the New Millenium, Black Cultural Traffic: Crossroads in Performance and Popular Culture and The Methuen Drama Book of Post-Black Plays. His articles have appeared in American Theater, American Drama, Modern Drama, Theatre Journal, Text, and Performance Quarterly as well as journals in Belgium, Israel, Poland, and Taiwan. He has also written essays published in several critical anthologies. Professor Elam is the former editor of Theatre Journal and is on the editorial boards of Atlantic Studies, Journal of American Drama and Theatre, and Modern Drama. In 2006, Professor Elam was the winner of the Betty Jean Jones award for Outstanding Teaching from the American Theatre and Drama Society, the winner of the Excellence in Editing Award from the Association of Theatre in Higher Education and the winner of the Distinguished Scholar Award from the American Society of Theatre Research. He was also inducted into the College of Fellows of the American Theatre in April 2006.

In addition to his scholarly work, he has directed professionally for over twenty years. Most notably, he directed Tod, the Boy Tod by Talvin Wilks for the Oakland Ensemble Company and for TheatreWorks in Palo Alto, California. He directed Radio Golf by August Wilson, Jar the Floor by Cheryl West and Blues for an Alabama Sky by Pearl Cleague, which was nominated for nine Bay Area Circle Critics Awards and was the winner of Drama-Logue Awards for Best Production, Best Design, Best Ensemble Cast and Best Direction. He has directed several other August Wilson plays, including Joe Turner's Come and Gone, Two Trains Running, and Fences, the latter of which won eight Bay Area “Choice” Awards. In 2010, at the Roble Theatre on the Stanford campus, Professor Elam directed Rent by Jonathan Larson.

At Stanford he has been awarded six different teaching awards: The ASSU Award for Undergraduate Teaching, Small Classes (1992); the Humanities and Sciences Deans Distinguished Teaching Award (1993); the Black Community Service Center Outstanding Teacher Award (1994) (2002), The Bing Teaching Fellowship for Undergraduate Teaching (1994-1997); The Rhodes Prize for Undergraduate Teaching (1998).

Harry J. Elam, Jr. received his AB from Harvard College in 1978 and his Ph.D. in Dramatic Arts from the University of California Berkeley in 1984.

Directing credits:
Tod, the Boy Tod, by Talvin Wilks

Radio Golf, by August Wilson
Jar the Floor, by Cheryl West
Blues for an Alabama Sky, by Pearl Cleague
Joe Turner's Come and Gone, by August Wilson
Two Trains Running, by August Wilson
Fences, by August Wilson
Rent, by Jonathan Larson