The Nuyorican Poets Café has for the past forty years provided a space for multicultural artistic expression and a platform for the articulation of Puerto Rican and black cultural politics. The Café’s performances—poetry, music, hip hop, comedy, and drama—have been studied in detail, but until now, little attention has been paid to the voices of its women artists. Through archival research and interview, Nuyorican Feminist Performance examines the contributions of 1970s and ’80s performeras and how they challenged the Café’s gender politics. It also looks at recent artists who have built on that foundation with hip hop performances that speak to contemporary audiences. The book spotlights the work of foundational artists such as Sandra María Esteves, Martita Morales, Luz Rodríguez, and Amina Muñoz, before turning to contemporary artists La Bruja, Mariposa, Aya de León, and Nilaja Sun, who infuse their poetry and solo pieces with both Nuyorican and hip hop aesthetics.

The official journal of the Mid-America Theatre Conference

Theatre History Studies (THS) is a peer-reviewed journal of theatre history and scholarship published annually since 1981 by the Mid-America Theatre Conference (MATC), a regional body devoted to theatre scholarship and practice. The conference encompasses the states of Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio. The purpose of the conference is to unite persons and organizations within the region with an interest in theatre and to promote the growth and development of all forms of theatre. THS is a member of the Council of Editors of Learned Journals and is included in the MLA Directory of Periodicals. THS is indexed in Humanities Index, Humanities Abstracts, Book Review Index, MLA International Bibliography, International Bibliography of Theatre, Arts & Humanities Citation Index, IBZ International Bibliography of Periodical Literature, and IBR International Bibliography of Book Reviews. Full texts of essays appear in the databases of both Humanities Abstracts Full Text and SIRS.

Along with book reviews on the latest publications from established and emerging voices in the field, this issue of Theatre History Studies contains three sections with fourteen essays total. In the general section, three essays offer an array of insights, methods, and provocations. In the special section on care, contributors capture their experience as scholars, humans, and citizens in 2022. In Part III, the 2022 Robert A. Schanke Research Award-winning paper by Heidi L. Nees asks historians to rethink Western constructions of time. Taken together, volume 42 captures how this journal serves theatre historians as scholars and laborers as they work to attend and tend to their field.

CONTRIBUTORS
Cheryl Black / Shelby Brewster / Matthieu Chapman / Meredith Conti / Zach Dailey / Michael DeWhatley / Whit Emerson / Katherine Gillen / Miles P. Grier / Patricia Herrera / Lisa Jackson-Schebetta / Nancy Jones / Joshua Kelly / Felicia Hardison Londré / Bret McCandless / Marci R. McMahon/ Tom Mitchell / Sherrice Mojgani / John Murillo III / Heidi L. Nees / Jessica N. Pabón-Colón / Kara Raphaeli / Leticia L. Ridley / Cynthia Running-Johnson / Alexandra Swanson / Catherine Peckinpaugh Vrtis / Shane Wood / Christine Woodworth / Robert O. Yates