March 8, 2022
Dr. Charlotte M. Canning, Frank C. Erwin, Jr. Centennial Professor in Drama and Head of the Oscar G. Brockett Center for Theatre History and Criticism, has been selected as the recipient of The University of Texas at Austin’s 2021 Civitatis Award.
Established in 1997, the annual Civitatis Award recognizes outstanding faculty citizenship, awarded to those who demonstrate exceptional dedication and service to the university above and beyond the regular expectations of teaching, research and service. Faculty who are selected have exhibited “dedicated and meritorious service” and show themselves to be “a person of such integrity, stature, demonstrated ability and renown that the university community, including alumni, faculty, staff and students, will take pride in and be inspired by his or her recognition.”
Dr. Canning is also a past recipient of the Regent’s Outstanding Teaching Award for The University of Texas System, an honor bestowed on faculty who have exhibited extraordinary classroom performance and innovation; as well as the Department of Theatre and Dance Teaching Excellence Award which celebrates faculty members who go above and beyond in their work both in and outside of the classroom.
In addition to her work within the Department of Theatre and Dance, Canning was also recently appointed Special Consultant to the Vice President for Student Affairs on Faculty Relations for the 2021-22 through 2023-24 academic years. In this position, she will help define the role of faculty in the student conduct process, enhance potential faculty opportunities across the Division of Student Affairs at UT Austin and develop methodologies for increasing faculty collaboration and engagement, supporting the various needs of faculty across campus.
Dr. Canning received her doctorate from the University of Washington. She is the author of Feminist Theaters In The USA: Staging Women's Experience (Routledge, 1996) and The Most American Thing in America: Circuit Chautauqua as Performance (Iowa, 2005) which won the 2006 Barnard Hewitt Award for Outstanding Research in Theatre History. She has published in many journals, including Theatre Topics, Theatre Research International, Theatre Survey, Theatre Journal, Theatre Annual, Theatre and LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory and her work has also been included in such anthologies as Staging International Feminisms, Restaging the Sixties: Radical Theatres and their Legacies, Women Writing Plays: The New Historiographies, Twentieth Century American Drama and Virtual Gender: Fantasies of Embodied Space and Subjectivity.