Elizabeth Maddock Dillon

Elizabeth Maddock Dillon in the Press

Long before ‘Hamilton’ brouhaha, theater was anything but polite

Attending the theater before 1850 or so in the United States was far more akin to attending a football game today than to attending contemporary theater. The audience was expected to make some noise, and as the scene at “Richard III” shows, it exercised the right to influence what happened on the stage as well […]

New Books in Latin American Studies

New world drama: The performative commons in the Atlantic world, 1649-1849

Riots, audiences on stage, fabulous costumes, gripping stories. That’s what theater was like in the Atlantic world in the age of slavery and colonialism. Elizabeth Maddock Dillon wonderful book New World Drama: The Performative Commons in the Atlantic World, 1649-1849 (Duke University Press, 2014) vividly invokes a transatlantic network of performances and their publics, and […]

For Comfort and Posterity, Digital Archives Gather Crowds

The pressure-cooker bombs that exploded at the finish line of the Boston Marathon last April 15 shattered bodies and lives. But their impact was felt far beyond the blast radius as the shock spread and authorities set out to find the perpetrators. The ensuing manhunt put an already traumatized city on lockdown. One of the […]

‘No Story Too Small’: Northeastern Launches Digital Archive of Boston Marathon Bombings

Six months ago, a thoughtless tragedy threatened the city’s resilience. The Boston Marathon is not just an event, but rather a universal symbol of strength. Roughly 27,000 runners from around the world commit to pushing themselves for 26.2 miles, while 500,000 spectators stand by to cheer them on. The tradition is woven into the fabric […]