Modern:Drama (defining the field), Part II

This is the second of two special issues of essays from the Modem:Drama (defining the field) conference, held in Toronto in May 2000 to interrogate the terms of reference for both this journal, Modern Drama, and the field of study it encompasses. As Ric Knowles outlined at the beginning of the last issue (volume 43, no. 4), both of these terms — "modern" and "drama" — have been subject to substantial scrutiny through the almost fifty years since the appearance of the first issue of Modern Drama. Today, the terms, their institutional locations, and their contributions to the constructions of disciplinarity barely resemble the relatively stable constructions that supported the journal's original mandate in 1958. The essays in this issue develop some of the provocative lines of argument established in 43.4 regarding the textual, political, and theatrical formations — and transformations — of modernism, modernity, postmodernism, drama, and performance.