Jenny Spencer,

Professor and Chair,

Department of English,

University of Massachusetts Amherst,

Amherst, MA

Jenny Spencer is Chair of the English Department at University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she teaches courses in modern and contemporary drama and performance theory. She earned her B.A (1973), M.A (1976), and Ph.D. (1982) at University of Iowa and has served as the President and as Faculty Advocate for the Massachusetts Society of Professors as well as Vice President of Research and Publications for the Association of Theatre in Higher Education. Her book, Dramatic Strategies in the Plays of Edward Bond, was published by Cambridge University Press in 1992 and her co-edited anthology, Staging Resistance: Essays on Political Theatre with Michigan University press in 1997. Her latest anthology, Political and Protest Theatre since 9/11: Patriotic Dissent, was published by Routledge in 2012. She is a former editor of Theatre Topics and has also published articles on the plays of Marsha Norman, Adrienne Kennedy, Mark Ravenhill, Tony Kushner, David Edgar, and Lillian Hellman. Her current interests include contemporary theories of audience and affect, documentary drama, and feminist performance. She is the founder of the Edinburgh Fringe Theatre Festival summer abroad course which is offered every August through the University of Massachusetts Amherst.