Drama critic wins award administered by English Dept.

The George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism for the 1997-98 season has been awarded to Alisa Solomon, author of Re-Dressing the Canon: Essays on Theater and Gender, published by Routledge and Kegan Paul. The award will be presented at a reception in New York City March 1.

Solomon is a staff writer at the Village Voice, where she writes theater criticism as well as news features on a wide range of political and cultural subjects. She is also a professor of English and journalism at Baruch College, City University of New York, and professor of English and theater at the CUNY Graduate Center.

The Nathan Award is administered by the Cornell Department of English, under the terms of a trust established by George Jean Nathan (1882-1958), author and critic, who graduated from Cornell in 1904. Designed to "stimulate intelligent play-going," the award has been given annually since 1958 for "the best piece of dramatic criticism, whether article, essay, treatise, or book," published during the theatrical year. The $10,000 prize is considered one of the richest and most distinguished in the American theater.

The winner is selected by a committee consisting of the chairs of the English departments of Cornell, Princeton and Yale universities and an expert on dramatic criticism from each department. The committee is led by Jonathan Culler, chair of Cornell's Department of English.

The committee considers, based on its own surveys and submitted nominations, works by authors, critics and reviewers who are U.S. citizens and whose works are published in print media, or broadcast on television or radio. Last year, three drama critics shared the prize. This year, the selection process was simplified owing to Solomon's singular contribution.

"Alisa Solomon's splendid book resolves the dilemma frequently encountered by the Nathan Prize Committee," Culler said. "There is no need to choose between the brilliant reviewer and the brilliant scholar when they are both the same person."

George Jean Nathan presided over the development of serious American drama and its audience for the period of their formative growth, 1910-1950. In a widely syndicated drama column, then in Smart Set and American Mercury, which he founded with H.L. Mencken, Nathan brought new sophistication to American dramatic criticism.

Previous winners of the Nathan Award include Walter Kerr (1963) and Mel Gussow (1978) of the New York Times, Kevin Kelly (1992) of the Boston Globe, John Lahr (1969, 1974) of the New Yorker, Robert Brustein (1961, 1986), Elizabeth Hardwick (1966) and Richard Gilman (1970).