About the Journal
The Journal of Global Theatre History (GTHJ) is a peer-reviewed, open access online journal focusing on recent research in theatre history devoted to exploring the historical dimensions of theatre, opera, dance and popular entertainment from global, transnational and transcultural perspectives. It places a particular emphasis on the institutional dimensions of the performing arts.
The journal has grown out of a research project conducted at Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich (LMU) entitled Global Theatre Histories: Modernization, Public Spheres and Transnational Theatrical Networks 1860-1960 (GTH). Sponsored by the German Research Society (DFG) within its Reinhart Koselleck programme for high risk research, this six-year project explored the emergence of theatre as a global phenomenon against the background of imperial expansion and modernization in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The Journal is issued by the recently established Centre for Global Theatre History, based at LMU’s department of theatre studies. General Editors are Christopher B. Balme and Nic Leonhardt.
The journal for Global Theatre History is published twice a year (spring and fall) and welcomes submissions that present original research on theatre, opera, dance, and popular entertainment against the backdrop of globalization studies, transnational and transcultural processes of exchange. We encourage submissions of material covering all historical periods, or epochs of all genres of the performing arts, but place special emphasis on the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries.
Current Issue
This special issue of the Journal of Global Theatre History seeks to address epistemological questions from historical, geopolitical, and institutional perspectives by investigating the reciprocal influence of Cold War politics and the conceptualization of universities. The contributors to this issue elaborate on the role Cold War politics played in the development of the university and arts education – in particular theatre education – as we understand them today; and, conversely, the role that the university and arts education – again, in particular theatre education – played in Cold War politics and the politics of decolonization that formed part of it.
The papers gathered in this special issue were presented at the international online workshop "Cold War University – Humanities and Arts Education as a (Battle)field of Diplomatic Influence and Decolonial Practice", organized by the ERC project Developing Theatre (GA no. 694559) in fall 2020.
