Nick Salvato, assistant professor of theatre in the Department of Theatre, Film and Dance, has published his first book, "Uncloseting Drama: American Modernism and Queer Performance," in Yale University Press' Yale Studies in English series.

In the book, Salvato illuminates modernism through little-known but striking works by Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein and others who revived the "closet drama" -- plays written largely for private reading -- as a means of exploring forbidden sexualities.

"One of my central goals is to recast closet drama as an elastic mode rather than as a tidy genre, in a move that is indebted to critics who have likewise redefined melodrama as a mode," Salvato said in an interview with Berfrois.com. "As for uncloseting drama, that means both to perform supposedly unperformable plays and, in performance, to bring attention to the queer dimensions of the plays."

Salvato is the incoming book review editor for Modern Drama, a journal published by the University of Toronto Press; and the guest editor of its Fall 2010 issue, which focuses on gossip. Salvato wrote the opening editorial comment and worked with various authors whose works focus on the relationship and affinity between gossip and drama, theater and performance.

He has also contributed articles to journals including Camera Obscura, the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, TDR: The Drama Review, Theatre Journal and Theatre Survey.

Kathy Hovis is a writer/editor for Entrepreneurship@Cornell.