Hobart and William Smith Colleges

14 August 2014 Farnsworth Edits Anthology, Publishes Chapter

Recently tenured Professor of Spanish and Hispanic Studies, May Farnsworth, published two pieces of scholarship on women in Latin American theatre history.

Escrito por mujeres II(Latin American Theatre Review Press), which Farnsworth co-edited with Brenda Werth from American University and Camilla Stevens from Rutgers University,is a collection of works by female playwrights in Latin America from 1910 to 2010. The collection includes a play by post-revolutionary Mexican author Magdalena Mondragn, Cuban-American playwright Dolores Prida, Colombian playwright Patricia Ariza, and Argentine playwright Susana Torres Molina.

In my general introduction to the anthology, I emphasize the impact of second and third-wave feminist thinkers on womens theatre in Latin America, Farnsworth says. The introduction notes the importance of Simone de Beauvoirs assessment of womens marginalization in theSecond Sex(1949), Rosario Ferres celebration of female subjectivity inSitio a Eros(1986), Gloria Anzaldas affirmation of Latina feminist identity inLa frontera/Borderlands(1987) and Judith Butler and Marta Lamass scholarship on gender studies in the Americas (1990).

These key feminist texts provide context for the four plays anthologized inEscrito por mujeres IIwhich emphasize diverse points of view in the areas of identity politics, gender deconstruction, and corporal subjectivity in 20th-century feminist theatre (from the 1950s to 2010), says Farnsworth.

She also co-authored a chapter inInternational Women Stage Directors(University of Illinois Press) on women directors in Argentina.

In the chapter, a historical essay about women stage directors in Argentina, Farnsworth argues that some of that countrys first female directors were feminist suffrage activists.

In 1919, for example, one suffrage activist ran for office several times despite the fact that women were denied the right to vote while another feminist advocate oversaw the operation of several mock voting booths for the rehearsal of womens voting rights, she says.

Farnsworth joined the HWS faculty in 2007. She received her Ph.D. and M.A. in Spanish American Literature from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and her B.A. from the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington.