StageStruck! Session 4: Women on Screen

Chaired by Colleen Montgomery, this panel features four lectures: Virginia Jansen, PhD student in Musicology at the University of California, Davis: "Strife! And Tribulation!": Refiguring gender and race in America's "Golden Age" of musical theater through the women of "Schmigadoon" Kelly Kessler, Professor of Media and Popular Culture at DePaul University: From the Teachers' Lounge to Television: American Musical Theater and the Forgotten Small Screen Legacy of Ethel Burns Adrienne McLean, Professor of Film Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas: Better than Everybody: Eleanor Powell and the Quandaries of Female Authorship in the Hollywood Musical Hannah Lewis, Associate Professor of Musicology at the University of Texas at Austin: "Lord Help the Sister Who Comes Between Me and My Man": The Performance of Femininity in "White Christmas" (1954) Part of the sixth StageStruck! Conference: "Women and the American Musical," a three-day conference May 14-16, 2025, hosted by the Music Division of the Library of Congress. The centrality of women to the American musical on stage and screen has long been acknowledged by scholarship. This special edition of StageStruck! at the Library of Congress focused on the latest research related to women in and around the American musical in all formats and media, and showcased the Library's rich collections related to the subject.