Introduction to the 2014 ATHE Bruce Kirle memorial emerging scholars papers in Music Theatre/Dance

Since Bruce Kirle’s death in 2007, the Music Theatre and Dance Focus Group of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education has sponsored the competitive Bruce Kirle Memorial Emerging Scholars panel in Music Theatre/Dance at its annual conference. Each year, the winning panelists present their work at the ATHE Conference that was held this year in Scottsdale, Arizona, in July 2014. This year’s panelists, Janet Werther, Hannah Adamy and Alison Walls, presented their papers in Arizona, and have revised them for publication as articles in Studies in Musical Theatre. Mary Jo Lodge, the respondent to the papers at the ATHE Conference, introduces them in this short article.