Introduction to the 2015 ATHE Bruce Kirle Memorial Emerging Scholars papers in Music Theater/Dance

For over a decade, the Music Theater and Dance Focus Group of the Association for Theater in Higher Education has sponsored the competitive Bruce Kirle Memorial Emerging Scholars panel in Music Theater/Dance at its annual conference. Each year, the winning panellists present their work at the ATHE conference, which was held this year in Montreal, Canada, in August 2015. This year’s panellists, Michelle Bernier, Shiraz Biggie and Phoebe Rumsey, presented their papers in Montreal, and have revised them for publication as articles in Studies in Musical Theatre. Bud Coleman, the respondent to the papers at the ATHE conference, introduces them in this short article.