W. B. Worthen
Department
Theatre
Office
Office Hours
Contact
Before joining Barnard's faculty in 2008, W. B. Worthen taught at the University of Michigan, University of California at Berkeley, University of California at Davis, Northwestern University, and University of Texas at Austin. He has been a visiting professor at Columbia University, taught at the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College, and was a founding faculty member of the International Centre for Advanced Theatre Studies, University of Helsinki. He is also appointed in the Department of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University, and in the Theatre Division, School of the Arts, Columbia University. He is Co-Chair of the Ph.D. Program in Theatre and Performance at Columbia.
Worthen has received numerous awards and grants, including the J.L. Styan Collegiate Professorship, University of Michigan, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship; he has also won teaching awards from the University of Texas, Northwestern University, and University of Michigan, and has been a fellow of the "Interweaving Performance Cultures," International Research Center of the Free University, Berlin. He is the past editor of the professional journals Modern Drama and Theatre Journal, and a winner of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education Research Award.
At Barnard he teaches a range of courses in drama and performance theory, modern theatre, and Shakespeare and performance; at Columbia, he co-chairs the Ph.D. in Theatre and Performance, teaching in that program and the Department of English and Comparative Literature as well. He is the author of several books ranging across drama, theatre, and performance studies, the editor of critical collections, and of The Wadsworth Anthology of Drama and Modern Drama: Plays/Criticism/Theory. His work has appeared in PMLA, TDR, Shakespeare Quarterly, Modern Drama, Theatre Journal, Shakespeare Bulletin, Performance Research, and other professional journals. He is currently the editor of the Cambridge University Press Elements series: Shakespeare Performance.
- Ph.D., English literature, Princeton University
- B.A., summa cum laude, English literature, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- Drama and performance studies
- Modern drama and performance
- Shakespeare
Theatre as Technology: Apparatus, Nostalgia, Obsolescence (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2025)
Shakespeare, Technicity, Theatre (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2020).
Shakespeare Performance Studies (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2014).
http://www.cambridge.org/US/academic/subjects/literature/renaissance-and...
Drama: Between Poetry and Performance (Blackwell-Wiley, 2010).
http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-EHEP001924.html
Print and the Poetics of Modern Drama (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2006).
http://www.cambridge.org/us/knowledge/isbn/item2326819/?site_locale=en_US
Shakespeare and the Force of Modern Performance (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2003).
http://www.cambridge.org/us/knowledge/isbn/item1114224/?site_locale=en_US
Shakespeare and the Authority of Performance (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1997).
http://www.cambridge.org/us/knowledge/isbn/item1152769/?site_locale=en_US
Modern Drama and the Rhetoric of Theater (Univ. of California Press, 1992).
http://www.ucpress.edu/op.php?isbn=9780520074682
The Idea of the Actor (Princeton Univ. Press, 1984).
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691639994/the-idea-of-the-actor
Editor, The Wadsworth Anthology of Drama, sixth edition (Wadsworth, 2010).
http://www.cengage.com/search/productOverview.do?Ntt=worthen||9781428288140&Ntk=all||P_Isbn13&Ns=P_CopyRight_Year|1&N=+16
Editor, Modern Drama: Plays/Criticism/Theory (Harcourt Brace, 1995).
Editor, with Barbara Hodgdon, A Companion to Shakespeare and Performance (Blackwell, 2005).
http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1405111046.html
Editor, with Peter Holland, Theorizing Practice: Redefining Theatre History (Palgrave, 2003).
https://link.springer.com/book/9781403907943
Editor, with Ric Knowles and Joanne Tompkins, Modern Drama: Defining the Field (University of Toronto Press, 2003).
http://www.utppublishing.com/Modern-Drama-Defining-the-Field.html
Editor, with Helka Mäkinen and S. Wilmer, Theatre History and National Identities (Helsinki: University of Helsinki Press, 2001).
“The Actor’s Tech.” Department of Theatre and Performance Studies, Stanford University, March 2026.
“James Loehlin, Shakespeare, and Performance.” Department of English, University of Texas at Austin, November 2025.
“‘Is it not monstrous?’: Acting and Technology (It’s not).” American Society for Theatre Research, Denver CO, November 2025.
“Acting as/and Technology.” Interpolations Conference, Washington University, St. Louis MO, September 2025.
“Theatre as Technology.” Anxieties of Influence seminar session, American Society for Theatre Research, Seattle WA, November 2024.
“The Artifice of the Human.” Interpolations Conference. Washington University, St. Louis MO, October 2024.
“The Artifice of the Human.” Shakespeare Association of America Annual Convention, Portland OR, April 2024.
“The Obsolescing Stage.” American Society for Theatre Research Annual Convention, Providence RI, November 2023.
“The Whirligig of Tech.” Shakespeare Association of America Annual Convention, Minneapolis MN, April 2023.
“Casting Things.” Shakespeare Association of America Annual Convention, Jacksonville FL, April 2022.
“Media, Archaeology, Performance: The Wooster Group Hamlet.” Rutgers University, March 2022.
“Passing Theatre.” Theatre Journal 75 (2023):445-54.
“A Whole Carnal Stereophony: Voicing The Wooster Group’s The Mother.” PAJ: Performing Arts Journal 131 (2022): 28-34.
“Zoom; or, Obsolescence.” TDR: The Drama Review—The Journal of Performance Studies, 65.3 T251 (2021): 181-200.
“Undeadness.” Performance Beyond Drama, special issue of Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 51.3 (2021): 497-507.
In The News
W. B. Worthen, chair of the Department of Theatre, talks about his newest book and the theatre as technology.