Unlike film, theater in America does not have a ratings board that censors content. So plays have had more freedom to explore and to transgress normative culture. Yet censorship of the theater has been part of American culture from the beginning, and continues today. How and why does this happen, and who decides whether a play is too dangerous to see or to teach? Are plays dangerous? Sinful? Even demonic? In our seminar, we will study plays that have been censored, either legally or extra-legally (i.e. refused production, closed down during production, denied funding, or taken off school reading lists). We'll look at laws, both national and local, relating to the "obscene", as well as unofficial practices, and think about the way censorship operates in American life now. And of course we will study the offending texts, themselves, to find what is really dangerous about them, for ourselves.

The decades leading up to the Civil War were a time of great change in the United States — politically, economically, and socially. Rapid economic growth brought about a growing middle class, in which many women were better educated than previous generations of their peers. At the same time, a greater number of lower-class women began working outside the home to earn a living. These and other changes led to gender equality becoming one of the most important societal issues of the era.Students will examine an 1850 Census questionnaire and an 1851 political cartoon to understand women’s rights issues during the Antebellum Period.