The musical Hamilton, which opened on Broadway in August 2015 after a successful run at the Public Theater, has, in just a few years, become an awards powerhouse, a political lightning rod, and a cultural touchstone. Lin-Manual Miranda’s epic work, based on Ron Chernow’s sweeping biography of Alexander Hamilton, stands at the intersection where history and historical accuracy converge, where rap and showtunes merge, and where pop culture and high (or middlebrow) culture meet. Hamilton is simultaneously a groundbreaking musical theater experiment and an heir to the musical’s historical legacy, and it is in this divided, even contradictory role, that the musical finds its success.

Musicologist Paul Laird (University of Kansas, kuvillancico@gmail.com) and theater scholar Mary Jo Lodge (Lafayette College, lodge@lafayette.edu) invite scholars from a wide range of disciplines to create essays about Hamilton for a proposed forthcoming edited collection with publication interest from Oxford University Press. For this scholarly volume, they seek chapters of 5000-6000 words that engage with the musical Hamilton as a work that straddles the divide between various tensions, and that revels in its sometimes conflicting positions.

In particular, the editors welcome chapters that engage with the following:
*Hamilton as history/Hamilton’s relationship to history and historical fact
*Hamilton’s musical relationship to rap music and rap history
*Hamilton’s groundbreaking, but sometimes troubling employment of race and gender
*Hamilton’s innovative social media and marketing strategies
*Hamilton’s political rhetoric, particularly in relationship to the 2016 US Presidential election
*Hamilton’s theatrical, musical and/or choreographic innovations
*Alexander Hamilton’s economic policies as reflected on stage

Interested contributors should send a 300-word abstract, with a title and brief biography, to the editors at lodgem@lafayette.edu by Friday, April 7, 2017.  Essays in all fields and areas should engage with the question of how Hamilton sits at a crossroads between disparate ideas and/or disciplines.  Contributors should indicate if the work has been published or presented elsewhere.

Please feel free to contact the editors with questions at the address listed above.