Robert Reginio
"A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. "
- Franz Kafka
Education
- PhD: English, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 2008
Specialties / Areas of Interest
- American and European Modernism
- Africana Studies
- Social Justice Studies
- Modern Drama
- Women and Gender Studies
- Critical Theory
- Bob Dylan & American History and Memory
- Samuel Beckett
Courses Taught
- ENGL 102: Writing II
- ENGL 214: Introduction to Drama
- ENGL 220/SJST 200: The Harlem Renaissance
- ENGL 226/SJST 220: The Holocaust and Literature
- ENGL 323: Survey of British Literature
- ENGL 341: Survey of American Literature
- ENGL 400: Major Figures: Virginia Woolf
- ENGL 400: Major Figures: Bob Dylan
- ENGL 422: Irish Literature
- ENGL 424: James Joyce
- ENGL 434: African-American Literature
- ENGL 442: Modern and Contemporary Drama
- ENGL 459/CRIT 459: Literary Criticism and Theory
- ENGL 460: Modernism
- HONR 117: The Sopranos: The Psychopathology of Everyday Violence
- HONR 119: The Music of New York City: 1950-2011
- HONR 137: American Gothic: The Films of David Lynch
- HONR 218: Bob Dylan and America
Research, Publications, & Presentations
Presentations
- Bob Dylan Before the Law. Paper Presented and Special Session organized The Persistence of Bob Dylan: Damaged Life, Endurance, and History. MLA Annual Conference. Selected as part of the Presidential Theme. Toronto. January 2021.
- Searching for Dignity: Various Versions of a Prophetic Calling. Paper Presented at The World of Bob Dylan Symposium. The University of Tulsa Institute for Bob Dylan Studies. June 2019.
- Listening to the Other: Bob Dylan and Empathy. Invited Lecture delivered at the conference New Approaches to Bob Dylan. University of Southern Denmark. Odense, Denmark. October 2018.
- Obsolete Technology: Beckett and Hollis Frampton. Paper Presented at the Conference Beckett & Technology. Charles University. Prague, Czech Republic. September 2018.
- "Love Songs, Broadsides, and Prophecies: The Problem of Empathy in Bob Dylan" Roundtable Contribution to 'The Dividing Line Ran Through the Center of Town': Bob Dylan’s Border Crossings. NeMLA Conference. April 2018.
- Bob Dylan’s Performance of Gender. Paper Presented at the Comparative Drama Conference. Baltimore. March 2016.
- Inscrutable Activities: Samuel Beckett and Conceptual Art. Paper Presented at the Inaugural Conference of the Samuel Beckett Society. Phoenix. February 2015.
- “Alone in Deserts of Parchment": Historical Guilt/Historical Traces in W.G. Sebald and Susan Howe. Roundtable Contribution to A Literature of Historical Guilt. NeMLA Annual Conference. Boston. March 2013.
- Bilderverbot, Photography, and the Ethics of Mimesis. Paper presented at the conference Mimesis Now: Literature, Art, Film, New Media. University of Rochester. April 2012.
- What Ever Happened to Irish Modernism? Panel organized and chaired. NeMLA Conference. March 2012.
- Embodied Voices, Inscribed Space: Beckett’s Late Drama In Circulation. Paper Presented at the Comparative Drama Conference. Baltimore. March 2012
- Ash Awaits Us: Entering the Archive with Beckett. Presentation made at the conference Samuel Beckett: Out of the Archive. York, UK. 2011.
- "Hybrids Absorbed in Hybrid Literature": Wallace Stevens between Reality and Conceptual Art. Paper Presented at the Annual NeMLA Conference. Rutgers University. April 2011.
- Obsolescence, Amnesia, Archive: Beckett Performing Testimony Across Media. Paper included in the 2009 Samuel Beckett Working Group Seminar at The International Federation of Theatre Research Annual Conference. Lisbon, Portugal. July 2009.
- Exhibiting Virginia Woolf’s Urban Affiliations: An Undergraduate Research Project at Alfred University. Panel organized with Alfred University undergraduates for the Nineteenth Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf. Fordham University. New York, Ny. June 2009.
- Archiving Oblivion in The Novels of Samuel Beckett and W.G. Sebald. Paper presented at the Samuel Beckett Society Panel. MLA Annual Convention. San Francisco 2008.
- Modernism in New York: Emergence of the Global City. Designed and led seminar at the annual meeting of the Modernist Studies Association. Nashville 2008.
- New York Dada and the Harlem Renaissance: Identities in Motion. Paper Presented at New York: City in Motion: An Interdisciplinary Conference. New York Institute of Technology. March 2006.
- Testifying Against the Archive: Reading Beckett with Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah. Paper Presented at the Institute for Contemporary French and Francophone Studies 2006 Conference: "Beckett at 100: New Perspectives." February 2006
- Interventions in the Future of Memory: The Holocaust in Film and Drama, Paper to be Presented at The Future of Memory: An International Holocaust and Trauma Studies Conference. University of Manchester, UK. November 2005.
- The Archival Gesture in Krapp’s Last Tape, A paper included in the 2005 Samuel Beckett Working Group Seminar at The International Federation of Theatre Research Annual Conference. (Chair: Linda Ben-Zvi). June 2005.
- Brecht and Beckett Constructing Modern Citizenship Paper Presented at the New Scholar’s Forum of The International Federation of Theatre Research Annual Conference. June 2005.
- Helped to organize and presented the paper Mrs. Dalloway and the Rest of the World: Reading London from Istanbul at the conference Theory in an Uneven World: A Workshop on R. Radhakrishnan’s Recent Book. University of Massachusetts. April 2005.
- Marcel Duchamp and Early American Modernism, Paper Presented at the 2005 conference of the American Comparative Literature Association. March 2005.
- Modernism, Exile, and New York Dada: A Reconsideration of Marcel Duchamp and Wallace Stevens, Paper Presented at the Twentieth-Century Literature and Culture Conference. February 2005.
- "Perpetually Contradicted:" Private Memories and History: Freud and Virginia Woolf Paper presented at the 13th Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf, Woolf in the Real World. June 2003.
- Listening to Memory: Brecht, Beckett and the Crisis of Modern Memory, Paper presented at the 2003 University of Vermont Graduate Conference, Reconstructing Worlds: The Response-ability of Memory. April 2003.
Research & Publications
- “Questioning Modernist Poetry: Feminist Poetics in the Classroom” essay in Teaching Modernist Women Writers. edited by Janine Utell. Modern Language Association Press. July 2021.
- “Listening to the Other: The Problem of Empathy in Bob Dylan.” essay in New Approaches to Bob Dylan. edited by Anne-Marie Mai. University of Southern Denmark Press. June 2020.
- Review of Bob Dylan’s Poetics: How the Songs Work by Timothy Hampton. commissioned for The Dylan Review. Vol. 1. No. 2. Winter 2019.
- "Ghostly Art Machines: Beckett & Systems & Art." Nieuwe Vide Journal. Forthcoming, 2018
- Review of Beckett's Art of Salvage. Text & Presentation. Forthcoming, 2018
- Samuel Beckett and Contemporary Art. Editor and Contributor. Ibidem Press, 2017
- "Nothing Doing: Samuel Beckett and Conceptual Art." Vol. 25. Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd'hui 2014
- "Samuel Beckett, the Archive, and the Problem of History." Samuel Beckett: History, Memory, Archive, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009
- "'Nettie Moore:' Minstrelsy and the Cultural Economy of Race in Bob Dylan's Late Albums. "Highway 61 Revisited: Bob Dylan’s Road from Minnesota to the World, University of Minnesota Press, 2009
- "Virginia Woolf and the Technologies of Exploration: Jacob’s Room as Counter-Monument." Selected Papers from the Fifteenth Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf. Clemson University Press. 2006
Awards/Honors
- Faculty Research Mentor Award, Alfred University, April 2014
- Excellence in Teaching Award, Alfred University, April 2012
- Postdoctoral Teaching Fellowship in Transatlantic Modernism, Frostburg State University, 2007-2008
- Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center Dissertation Fellowship, 2006
- International Federation of Theatre Research: New Scholar’s Prize, Second Prize, 2006
- Awarded Research and Travel Grant by the Graduate School, University of Massachusetts, 2005
- Awarded Travel and Research Grant, English Department, University of Massachusetts, Spring 2000, 2005
- Finalist for University-Wide Distinguished Teaching Award, 2006
- Outstanding Teaching Award, Department of Continuing Education, University of Massachusetts, 2003
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