How theater artists helped restore democracy in Chile; thirty ways to consider the playwright María Irene Fornés; fifteen takes on immersive performance; the history of the Palestine Theater Movement. These are among the winners of the annual awards by The Association of Theatre in Higher Education in two categories: Outstanding Book and Edited Works.

Below are descriptions of the six books, the titles linked to its page on Amazon for more information (some providing sample chapters) or to purchase (some of which are being offered free on Kindle.) 

It’s also worth reading in its entirety Article Award winner Patrick McKelvey’s “‘Honest Work Done by Honest Dogs’: Canine Unemployment, Interspecies Rehabilitation, and Disability Performance.”  The lead paragraph:
The first guide dog for the blind appeared on Broadway on June 11, 1928. Buddy, a German shepherd trained at a Swiss kennel, did not grace the stage itself—not on this occasion, at least. Nor did she take up residence in the auditorium where, years later, she might have lain at the feet of her companion Morris Frank, a white 20-year-old insurance salesman. She instead performed on the theatre district’s thoroughfare itself. The goal was to “test Buddy in American traffic” in order to demonstrate “that she was every bit as safe as a human guide.”¹ Freshly disembarked from the Tuscania that brought the newly matched partnership stateside, she and Frank ambled along the Great White Way, creating a “performance” that “everybody thought … was spectacular.'”² This imminently routine spectacle comprised principally of walking at a steady clip, with Buddy positioned at Frank’s left, half her body length in the lead. They repeatedly paused at curbs, crossed streets, and avoided potholes, articulating a choreographic structure that nevertheless maintained room for improvisation. Should Frank pose a risk to their safety—by insisting they cross the street at inopportune moments, for example—Buddy would demonstrate her guiding prowess through acts of what guide dog trainers have called “educated disobedience.”³

A Movement’s Promise: The Making of Contemporary Palestian Theater
Samer Al-Saber
Stanford University Press
The story of the Palestinian Theater Movement over nearly three decades, as they created plays and productions that articulated versions of Palestinian identity, critiqued social norms, celebrated and extended Palestinian cultural values, and challenged the power disparity created by the Occupation.

Performing Citizenship in Postdictatorship Chile: Cultural Policy and the Making of Political Dramaturgies
Jennifer Joan Thompson
Northwestern University Press
traces the ways artists confronted and resisted the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, how they then reimagined the body politic during the early transitional period and challenged official constructions of history and memory as the transition to democracy progressed

Youth, Power, Performance: Applied Theatre with Systemically Marginalized Youth, 
Diane Conrad
Intellect
Practical strategies for engaging with youth based on the author’s experience in three specific contexts: in alternative high schools, in a youth jail and with street-involved youth. 

Enveloping Worlds: Towards a Discourse of Immersive Performance
Edited by E.B. Hunter and Scott Magelssen
University of Michigan Press

a collection of essays that analyzes the phenomenon of immersive, participatory performance as it has developed in the US, with an expansive view of what immersive, and even what performance, means.

The editors quote “theater theorist” Brian Herrera (who happens to be editor of another award-winning collection this year; see below): “if the nineteenth century saw the ascendence of the audio, and the twentieth century the ascendence of the televisual, the twenty-first century is the ascendance of the immersive.”

María Irene Fornés In Context
Edited by Brian Eugenio Herrera and Anne García-Romero
Cambridge University Press

 The first major scholarly collection to elucidate the rich life, work, and legacy of this pioneering playwright, director, and teacher,, featuring thirty essays, including by several well-known playwrights Caridad Svich, Migdalia Cruz and Luis Alfaro.

Performance Matters, Dramaturgies of Accessibility,Vol. 11, nos. 1–2 
Edited by Pil Hansen and Jessica Watkin

Authors and artists in this issue of the journal consider the consequences of placing the strengths of individuals with physical, perceptual, or cognitive Disabilities at the centre of our ways of working and knowing.