Dr. Ilka Saal

Associate Professor of English
322 Ryland Hall
Office: (804) 289-8300
Fax: (804) 289-8313

Teaching:
American Studies
Drama and Theater
Comparative Literature

Research:
Nation as Narration
Mimesis and Mimicry
Political Theater
Theater of War

Education:
Ph.D. in Literature, Duke University
M.A. in American Studies and East Slavic Studies, Universität Leipzig

Selected Publications:

New Deal Theater: The Vernacular Tradition in American Political Theater. New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2007.

Passionate Politics: The Cultural Work of American Melodrama from the Early Republic to the Present, ed. Ilka Saal & Ralph J. Poole. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2008.

Dramatizing the Disease: Responses to AIDS on the US American Stage. Marburg: Tectum 1997.

“Making it Real: Theater in Times of Virtual Warfare” Journal of American Drama and Theatre 20:2 (Spring 2008): 65-86.

“On the Stages of Istanbul: Atatürk and The New Young Turks.” TDR 51.2 (Summer 2007): 181-186.

“Vernacularizing Brecht: The Political Theater of the New Deal.” In Interrogating America through Theatre and Performance, ed. William Demastes and Iris Smith Fischer. New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2006, 100-119.

“’The Only Possible Heroes of our Time’: Imagining Terrorism in Postmodern Art.” In America and the Orient, ed. Heike Schäfer. Heidelberg: Winter 2006, 249-265.

“The Politics of Mimicry: The Minor Theater of Suzan-Lori Parks.” South Atlantic Review 7:2 (Spring 2005): 57-71.

“Performance and Perception: Sexuality, Gender, and Culture in D. H. Hwang’s M. Butterfly.” Amerikastudien 43:4 (1998): 629-644.