The Department of American Culture and Literature welcomes you to a talk by Matthew Helm titled \u201cThe Televisual Proscenium: Staging the Archive in Harvey Fierstein\u2019s Torch Song Trilogy\u201d<\/p>\n
When: 4 March, 2026; 16:30-18:00
\nWhere: Humanities Seminar Room (H-232)
\nGE 250\/251: 15 Points<\/p>\n
Abstract:
\nCritics have long approached Harvey Fierstein\u2019s Torch Song Trilogy (1982) in paradoxical terms: dismissed for its sentimentality, appeals to tolerance, and apparent assimilationist politics, yet celebrated as a groundbreaking depiction of sexuality and family life, especially for its influence on later television sitcoms. Such readings rely on a linear progress narrative that equates increased visibility with inevitable social change\u2014an assumption the play unsettles through its self-conscious engagement with media technology. In media-archaeological terms, the stage becomes a site for excavating the archive, \u201crerunning\u201d forgotten TV histories and enacting the intergenerational transmission of memory. This presentation is an excerpt from a work-in-progress book, Transmediations: Media Materialism in the Archives of Queer Literature.<\/p>\n
Bio:
\nDr. Matthew Helm is a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at the University of Iowa. His scholarship has appeared in The Nathaniel Hawthorne Review, Religion & Literature, Studies in the Novel, and differences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Department of American Culture and Literature welcomes you to a talk by Matthew Helm titled \u201cThe Televisual Proscenium: Staging the Archive in Harvey Fierstein\u2019s Torch Song Trilogy\u201d When: 4 March, 2026; 16:30-18:00 Where: Humanities Seminar Room (H-232) GE 250\/251: 15 Points Abstract: Critics have long approached Harvey Fierstein\u2019s Torch [\u2026] <\/p>\n