Stacy Wolf

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Stacy Wolf is Professor of Theater & Music Theater in the Lewis Center for the Arts and the Effron Center for the Study of America and the Director of the Princeton Arts Fellows.

Wolf is the author of A Problem Like Maria: Gender and Sexuality in the American Musical (2002); Changed for Good: A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical (2011); and Beyond Broadway: The Pleasure and Promise of Musical Theatre Across America, which was a finalist for the Association for Theatre in Higher Education’s 2020 Outstanding Book Award. An excerpt from Beyond Broadway, “Out of the Spotlight, Still a Star: The ‘Backstage Diva,’” was published in the New York Times.

Wolf co-edited The Oxford Handbook of the American Musical (2011) and “Sondheim from the Side,” a special issue of Studies in Musical Theatre (2023) that brings together personal reflections on Sondheim’s musicals by women, queers, Jews, people of color, and others. Wolf has published widely on musical theatre and U.S. culture, including articles on Hamilton and gender and on college student productions of Sondheim’s musicals in the age of #MeToo. Her current research projects include an article about the composer Jeanine Tesori and a book, Feminist Approaches to Musical Theatre, which she is co-writing with Paige Allen, a member of Princeton's Class of 2021.

Wolf teaches seminars on gender and race in the American musical, including a class on the musicals of Stephen Sondheim, and she regularly offers public lectures about musical theatre.

She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, two Bogliasco Fellowships, a President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching from Princeton, and was named the 2024 Distinguished Scholar by the American Society for Theatre Research.

Video: A Message from Stacy Wolf

Stacy Wolf, Professor of Theater and Director of Fellowships at the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University, shares details on opportunities to study and make musical theater at Princeton.

“A new sightline at the theater: Dolan and Wolf bring fresh view of performance studies” | Princeton University, February 26, 2009

“Performing Desire” | The Drama Review (TDR), Winter 2014 Issue

“How to Make Broadway Musical Theater More Diverse…and Empower Kids Along the Way” | Huffington Post, June 2015

“10 Books Every Theatre Lover Should Read” | ArtsBoston, September 2016

“An Updated Company for an Era of Single Women” | The Atlantic, November 2016

Princeton University President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching | Princeton University, June 2017

HowlRound Theatre History Podcast — From West Side Story to Wicked: Stacy Wolf on Feminism & the Broadway Musical

“Lessons off Broadway: Princeton professor dissects zeitgeist in musicals” | CBC Radio, Ideas, October 4, 2019

Wolf discusses her new book at BroadwayCon 2020 — January 24, 2020

Stacy Wolf: All the World’s a Stage | Princeton Alumni Weekly, April 8, 2020

“Beyond Broadway”: PU Professor’s New Book Celebrates Community Theatre | Town Topics, April 29, 2020

Out of the Spotlight, Still a Star: The ‘Backstage Diva’ — By Stacy Wolf for The New York Times, March 2020

Berkshire Theatre Group Theatre Book Club with Katie Birenboim: Live Conversation with Stacy Wolf on “Beyond Broadway” | Facebook Live, June 1, 2020, 4 PM (EDT)

“Conversation with Princeton Professor and Musical Theatre Scholar Stacy Wolf” | Broadway World Student Blog, October 12, 2020

“Wolf’s Beyond Broadway named finalist for ATHE Outstanding Book Award” | Association for Theatre in Higher Education, June 5, 2021

Wolf participates in “Writing Wicked” panel at BroadwayCon | February 2025