In American Drama: The Bastard Art, Susan Harris Smith looks at the many often conflicting cultural and academic reasons for the neglect and dismissal of American drama as a legitimate literary form.

Covering a wide range of topics - theatrical performance, the rise of nationalist feeling, the creation of academic disciplines, and the development of sociology - Smith's study is a contentious and revisionist historical inquiry into the troubled cultural and canonical status of American drama, both as a literary genre and as a mirror of American society.