Aims & Scope

Studies in Musical Theatre considers areas of live performance that use vocal and instrumental music in conjunction with theatrical performance as a principal part of their expressive language. The journal is double-blind peer-reviewed in order to maintain the highest standards of scholastic integrity.

Submissions

To submit an article, please follow the 'Submit' button on the left of this page.

Download the Notes for Contributors above for information on format and style of submissions. If you need this document in a more accessible format, please contact info@intellectbooks.com. Find more information on Intellect's Accessibility page.

All articles submitted should be original work and must not be under consideration by other publications.

Journal contributors will receive a free PDF copy of their final work upon publication. Print copies of the journal may also be purchased by contributors at half price.

Peer Review Policy

All articles undergo initial editorial screening either by the journal's Editorial Team and/or incumbent Guest Editors. Articles then undergo a rigorous anonymous peer review by two referees, following the guidance in Intellect's 'Peer review instructions'. Based on this feedback, the Editors will communicate a decision and revision suggestions to authors. To appeal an editorial decision, please contact the main Editor who will consider your case.

Ethical Guidelines

The journal follows the principles set out by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Read our Ethical Guidelines for more on the journal's standards.

General Call for Papers information

All articles submitted should be original work and must not be under consideration by other publications.

We welcome discussions on any theme relating to musical theatre in its widest sense, from the musicological to the postdramatic and from the textual to the performative. Articles should be between 5,000–10,000 words and should include original work of a research or developmental nature. The journal also welcomes contributions embracing issues relating to practice. A sample area of considerations might include, but is not restricted to:

• revisions of historiographical narratives;

• applied musicological or dramaturgical analysis;

• archival and production research;

• innovative paradigms of critical thought;

• performance and performance practice;

• approaches to training and the industry;

• the fusion of words and music;

• the use of music and song within theatre, film and related art forms;

• critical approaches to musical theatre;

• industry issues;

• globalization, consumption and commodification.

Further information on the journal is available from the journal Editors.

Call for Papers: 

Studies in Musical Theatre Special Issue: Disability in Music Theatre

Disability and musicals have a complicated relationship. Usually comprised of athletic, triple-threat actors, the musical theatre genre is preoccupied with health and wellness–often figuring disability as a stumbling block to a musical’s slickly choreographed world. At the heart of musicals like Side Show, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and The Light in the Piazza, a disabled character’s non-normative status is of narrative consequence. However, these inclusions of disabled characters with diegetic disabilities are often only remarkable because of their societally defined excessive existence. Broadway revivals like Oklahoma! (2019) and Camelot (2022), as well as regional work like Deaf West’s Fidelio (2022), Olney Theatre Center’s The Music Man (2022, featuring a Deaf Harold Hill) or Beauty and the Beast (2021, featuring an amputee Beast), cast disabled performers in traditionally nondisabled roles, refiguring well-known characters and their relationship to the world of the play and its spectators. How to Dance in Ohio (2023) authentically casts autistic characters and uses access models for sensory-friendly performance as a production baseline, thereby demonstrating how accessibility can transform the theatrical experience and work as a commercial producing model.

Cumulatively, the history of musical theatre demands a more robust engagement with disability/crip aesthetics as a distinct method in performance, pedagogy, accessibility and theory. This special issue of Studies in Musical Theatre takes aim at the compulsory able-bodiedness of the musical theatre canon and the ways the repertory frames disability in intersection with other forms of difference as constitutive of “excess” or freakery. As Disability Studies continues to grow as an analytical framework in musical theatre studies and beyond, this issue reserves space to reflect, take stock and think about the continued expansion of the field. We invite articles and notes from the field that might consider the following contributions:

● Questions of how disability severity is legible or formed through aesthetics, pedagogies, and production models

● (Re)Considerations of how disability is represented in local or regional musical theatre circuits or productions

● Reparative readings of musical theatre histories and investigations into how we do disability history and historiography of the late 19th and early 20th century repertoire

● Analyses of dramaturgical approaches to new or canonical works featuring disabled characters

● Interviews with or research on significant architects of disability-centered musical-theatrical performance (actors, composers, lyricists, directors, choreographers, musical directors, producers, etc.)

● Labor and union practices, and relevant case studies about disability-informed theatre practices

● Mapping the landscape of access-forward production practices, companies that employ them, and their correspondent costs or funding structures

● Assessments of alliances or schisms between methodological approaches to theatrical study and practice across Neurodiverse, Mad, Deaf, Disability and Crip cultures

● Intersections between Disability Studies and cognate fields like Fat Studies, critical race and ethnic studies, Indigenous Studies and Communication Disorders as they impact musical theatre and its intellectual, aesthetic or experienced coalitions.

We invite submissions in the form of articles up to 4,000 words or process-driven Notes from the Field (no more than 1000 words) that document the logistics of producing disability-centered musical theatre.

Please submit a 250-word abstract by April 1, 2024 to co-editors Samuel Yates (yates@psu.edu), Caitlin Marshall (csmars@umd.edu), and Lindsey R. Barr (lrb@american.edu) with the subject heading “SMT Disability.” Completed drafts for essays of approximately 4000 words and notes of approximately 1000 words will be due late Summer 2024.

Issue 19.2 will be published in Summer 2025.

You are welcome to email Samuel Yates, Lindsey R. Barr, or Caitlin Marshall with questions.

Editorial Board

Masi Asare (Northwestern School of Communication, USA)
Sarah Browne (University of Wolverhampton)
Ryan Bunch (Rutgers University-Camden, USA)
John Clum (Duke University, USA)
Judah M. Cohen (Indiana University Bloomington, USA)
Elizabeth Craft (University of Utah, USA)
Joanna Dee Das (Washington University in St. Louis, USA)
Ryan Donovan (Duke University, USA)
Eric M. Glover (Yale University, USA)
Naomi Graber (University of Georgia, USA)
Elissa Harbert (DePauw University, USA)
Stuart Hecht (Boston College, USA)
Jessica Hillman-McCord (State University of New York at Fredonia, USA)
Jake Johnson (University of Oklahoma, USA)
Pamela Karantonis (Goldsmiths, University of London, UK)
Hyunjung Lee (Kansai Gaidai University, Japan)
James Lovelock (University of Wolverhampton, UK)
Miranda Lundskaer-Nielsen (Bath Spa University, UK)
Ben Macpherson (University of Portsmouth, UK)
Emilio Méndez (National Autonomous University of Mexico)
Dara Milovanovic (University of Nicosea, Cyprus)
Ellen Peck (Jacksonville State University, USA)
Doug Reside (New York Public Library, USA)
George Rodosthenous (University of Leeds, UK)
Phoebe Rumsey (University of Portsmouth, UK)
Sarah Whitfield (University of Wolverhampton, UK)
Trudi Wright (Regis University, USA)

Advisory Board

George Burrows (University of Portsmouth, UK)
Kelly Kessler (DePaul University, USA)
Raymond Knapp (UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, USA)
Jeffrey Magee (University of Illinois, USA)
Carol Oja (Harvard University, USA)
Gillian Rodger (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA)
David Savran (CUNY Graduate Center, USA)
Robynn Stilwell (Georgetown University, USA)
Steve Swayne (Dartmouth College, USA)
Dominic Symonds (University of Lincoln, UK)
Millie Taylor (University of Winchester, UK)
Stacy Wolf (Princeton University, USA)