CLUM, John M(acKenzie) 1941-

PERSONAL: Born September 29, 1941, in Asbury Park, NJ; son of Henry George (a lighting engineer) and Edythe (Black) Clum; partner of Walter Melion. Education: Princeton University, A.B., 1963, M.A., 1966, Ph.D., 1967. Politics: Democrat. Religion: Unitarian.

ADDRESSES: Home—7 Creekview Lane, Durham, NC 27705. Office—Department of English, Duke University, Durham, NC 27706. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Duke University, Durham, NC, assistant professor, 1966-76, associate professor of English, 1976—, director of drama program, 1975-85, also theatrical director and managing director of summer theater. Currently professor of English and theater studies and chair of department of theater studies.

MEMBER: American Society for Theatre Research, Southeastern Theatre Conference, North Carolina Theatre Conference.

AWARDS, HONORS: Trinity College Distinguished Teaching Award, Duke University, 1999.

WRITINGS:

Ridgely Torrence, Twayne (Boston, MA), 1972.

Paddy Chayefsky, Twayne (Boston, MA), 1976.

(Editor, with Ronald R. Butters) Displacing Homophobia: Gay Male Perspectives in Literature and Culture, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), 1989.

Acting Gay: Male Homosexuality in Modern Drama, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1992, revised as Still Acting Gay: Male Homosexuality in Modern Drama, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2000.

(Editor) Staging Gay Lives: An Anthology of Contemporary Gay Theater, Westview Press (Boulder, CO), 1995.

Something for the Boys: Musical Theater and Gay Culture, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1999.

"He's All Man": Male Homosexuality and the Myths of Masculinity in American Drama and Film, Palgrave (New York, NY), 2002.

Coauthor of Sanctuary (two-act play), first produced in Durham, NC, 1976. Author of Randy's House, first produced by Theatre Conspiracy, Washington, DC, 1995, and Dancing in the Mirror, produced in San Francisco and Durham, NC. Contributor of articles and reviews to literary journals, including South Atlantic Quarterly, Modern Drama, and AmericanLiterature. Contributor of essays to Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams, Cambridge Companion to Sam Shepard, and Cambridge Companion to Edward Albee.

SIDELIGHTS: A professor of both English and drama, John M. Clum is the author of several books exploring gay issues in theatre and film. His 1992 work Acting Gay: Male Homosexuality in Modern Drama takes a three-part view of homosexual themes on the contemporary stage. In the section titled "Bodies and Taboos" the author, according to Theatre Research International critic Ian Lucas, discusses "three forms of representation found to be controversial or problematic in mainstream theatre—kissing, frontal nudity and drag." Lucas added that Clum links these actions to "an analysis of AIDS dramas." In other chapters, the author coins the phrase "closet dramas" to refer to theatrical themes that use a kind of code to indicate same-sex relationships where they may not otherwise be apparent to mainstream audiences. A contributor to TDR, Bradley Boney, wondered "to what extent is Clum 'trapping' gay men in a history of invisibility and internalized homophobia?" Acting Gay was revised in 2000 to reflect the more recent status of homosexual-themed theatre.

According to Modern Drama reviewer Stacy Wolf, Clum "argues forcefully for the importance of camp [heightened theatricality and parody], both to the identities of gay men and to the aesthetic and political significance of the pre-Stonewall musical" ("Stonewall" refers to the 1969 raid of a gay bar that sparked the beginnings of the gay rights movement.) Clum, continued Wolf, "also demonstrates how many musicals can be 'queered' by gay male spectators. He suggests that gay men identify with the diva," the female character who, as the author describes it, "defies conventional notion of gender and plays out the parodic, larger-than-life performance of gender."

While Wolf characterized Clum's interpretations as ranging from "astute to sloppy," the critic went on to note that the ideal audience for Something for the Boys is "the already converted, the already knowledgeable, and, more precisely, the urbane gay man who will have his experiences confirmed by Clum's and his knowledges explained and perhaps broadened."

Clum has applied his theories to film in the 2002 book "He's All Man": Male Homosexuality and the Myths of Masculinity in American Drama and Film. This book, suggested David Azzolina in a review for Library Journal, "gives readers a definitive treatment of how a popular form represents gay men and, more generally, manhood."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Advocate, July 30, 1992, review of Acting Gay: Male Homosexuality in Modern Drama, p. 81.

American Literature, December, 1993, David Roman, review of Acting Gay, p. 823.

American Theatre, February, 1993, Michael Cadden, review of Acting Gay, p. 44.

Choice, November, 1996, review of Staging Gay Lives: An Anthology of Contemporary Gay Theater, p. 472.

Journal of Homosexuality, January, 1994, Jack Byers, review of Acting Gay, p. 182.

Kirkus Reviews, October 1, 1999, review of Something for the Boys: Musical Theater and Gay Culture, p. 1538.

Lambda Book Report, September-October, 1993, Michael Paller, review of Acting Gay, p. 32.

Library Journal, March 1, 1992, Thomas Luddy, review of Acting Gay, p. 91; December, 1995, Howard Miller, review of Staging Gay Lives, p. 110; December, 1999, review of Something for the Boys, p. 136; June 1, 2002, David Azzolina, review of "He's All Man": Male Homosexuality and the Myths of Masculinity in American Drama and Film, p. 177.

Modern Drama, winter, 1995, Bruce Smith, review of Acting Gay, p. 525.

Multicultural Review, December, 1993, review of Acting Gay, p. 25.

New York Times Book Review, June 28, 1992, David Kaufman, review of Acting Gay, p. 24; January 2, 2000, Bill Goldstein, "The Gay White Way," p. 16.

Publishers Weekly, November 1, 1999, review of Something for the Boys, p. 71.

Reference and Research Book News, September, 1994, review of Acting Gay, p. 43.

TDR (Cambridge, MA), fall, 1994, Bradley Boney, review of Acting Gay, p. 196.

Theatre Journal, December, 2000, review of Something for the Boys, p. 594.

Theatre Research International, spring, 1993, Ian Lucas, review of Acting Gay, p. 75.

Washington Post Book World, June 21, 1992, review of Acting Gay, p. 13; May 6, 2001, review of Something for the Boys, p. 10.