Szczepaniak-Gillece: New Book Project

Jocelyn J Szczepaniak-Gillece received a C21 in support of her book project, The Optical Vacuum: Spectatorship and Modernized American Theater Architecture. This book is the first full-length monograph devoted to the emergence of the modernized (what Szczepaniak-Gillece calls “neutralized”) theater from the late 1920s-1960s, and the impact of this modern theater on the construction of spectatorship. The book focuses particularly on midcentury architect, designer, and theorist Benjamin Schlanger, who insisted on the importance of the immersive properties of film and theatrical environment working together as a single element. Szczepaniak-Gillece also was just named the 2016 Dubuque Research Fellow for the Theatre Historical Society of America in support of the same project. She will be conducting research at their archives in May.