Symbolon (Oct 2021)
Theatre and the University: Historical and Future Perspectives
Abstract
This paper discusses the emergence of arts education at universities and associated institutions of higher learning after 1945. In the first part the question of the university as an institution will be discussed from the point of view of neo-institutional theory and especially the processes of isomorphism that have been frequently described in this theoretical approach. The second section examines the emergence of arts education between 1950 and 1970, i.e. at the height of the Cold War. The third section proposes a topology of arts education and the differential realisation of these models in different parts of the world. The final section discusses the emergence of universities of the arts and their somewhat hybrid position within the larger institutional framework of the research-focused university of today.
