Stephen Watt (Email; phone 812-855-3140)
Professor
Adjunct Professor of Theatre and Drama
Ph.D., University of Illinois, 1982
I am a Professor of English
—and of Theatre and Drama—and have taught at Indiana since 1985. My major research interests include drama and theatre of the 19th and 20th centuries, Irish Studies, and the contemporary university. I’ve recently finished a book Beckett and Contemporary Irish Writing, which discusses such writers as Samuel Beckett, Brian Friel, Marina Carr, John Banville, Paul Muldoon, Derek Mahon, and others. While doing research for those sections of the book that deal specifically with Northern Ireland, I became intrigued by the internment of political prisoners, not only the specific histories and effects of internment during the “Troubles,” but also their representation in film and on stage. My next project will move in these directions, though I am also planning to write another book on the discipline of English with my friend and occasional collaborator, Cary Nelson of the University of Illinois.
Click here for further information regarding Professor Watt's work in 20th Century Literature and culture.
Click here for further information regarding Professor Watt's work in Victorian Studies.
RECENT GRADUATE COURSES
Drama and Theatre in Victorian England
Samuel Beckett and Contemporary Irish Theatre
Reading James Joyce’s Ulysses
Understanding Northern Ireland (in development)
RECENT AND FORTHCOMING WRITING
Books:
Beckett and Contemporary Irish Writing (Cambridge University Press, 2009).
Office Hours: Activism and Change in the Academy (Routledge, 2004; co-authored with Cary Nelson).
Academic Keywords: A Devil’s Dictionary for Higher Education (Routledge, 1999; co-authored with Cary Nelson).
Postmodern/Drama: Reading the Contemporary Stage (University of Michigan Press, 1998).
Joyce, O’Casey, and the Irish Popular Theatre (Syracuse University Press, 1991)
Anthologies:
Edward P. Comentale, Stephen Watt, and Skip Willman, eds. Ian Fleming and James Bond: The Cultural Politics of 007 (Indiana University Press, 2005).
Stephen Watt, Eileen Morgan, and Shakir Mustafa, eds. A Century Of Irish Drama: Widening the Stage (Indiana University Press, 2000).
Kevin J.H. Dettmar and Stephen Watt, eds. Marketing Modernisms (University of Michigan Press, 1995).
Judith H. Fisher and Stephen Watt, eds. When They Weren’t Doing Shakespeare: Essays on Nineteenth-Century British and American Theatre (University of Georgia Press, 1989).
Recent/Forthcoming Essays and Articles:
“The Price of Celebrity: Samuel Beckett, Tourist Attraction,” Modernist Celebrity, eds. Aaron Jaffe and Jonathan Goldman (Ashgate, 2009, forthcoming).
“The Humanities, The University, and the Enemy Within,” in Cary Nelson and the Struggle for the University, ed. Michael Rothberg (Albany: SUNY Press, 2009): 123-140.
“Voices, Things, Events: Harold Pinter’s Mountain Language as Testamental Text,” Modern Drama 52 (Spring 2009): 38-56.
“Friel and the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’ Play,” in The Cambridge Companion to Brian Friel, ed. Anthony Roche (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 30-40.
“Modern American Drama,” in The Cambridge Companion to American Modernism, ed. Walter Kalaidjian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 102-126.
“007 and 9/11, Specters and Structures of Feeling,” in Ian Fleming and James Bond: The Cultural Politics of 007, eds. Comentale, Watt and Willman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), pp. 238-259.
“Collegial Propositions,” Symploke 13. 1-2 (2005): 18-29.
“Before the Abbey—and Beyond,” in The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Irish Drama, ed. Shaun Richards (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 18-32.
SELECTED HONORS AND AWARDS
President, Midwest Modern Language Association, 1999-2000; Executive Committee, American Conference for Irish Studies, 1999-2001; National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Collaborative Research Fellowship, 1999; NEH Fellowship (1998-99); Howard Fellow (Brown University), 1992-93 |
