Alan Ackerman

Biography

Alan Ackerman is a Professor of English. His primary areas of teaching are American Literature and Modern Drama. He is the author of Just Words: Lillian Hellman, Mary McCarthy, and the Failure of Public Conversation in America (Yale University Press, 2011), Seeing Things, from Shakespeare to Pixar (University of Toronto Press, 2011), and The Portable Theater: American Literature and the Nineteenth-Century Stage (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999). He is also the editor of numerous books in the field of modern drama and theatre and is currently co-editing a Reader in Comic Theory and Criticism (Bloomsbury, forthcoming) with Magda Romanska. He recently published an article entitled “Comedy, Capitalism, and a Loss of Gravity” in Discourse, which examines Depression-era animated film through the lens of ecocriticism. From 2005 to 2015, he served as Editor of the journal Modern Drama. His current research is in the field of environmental humanities and focuses on Walt Whitman, grass, and urban green space. Professor Ackerman holds a joint-appointment in the Centre for Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies.

research interests

19th + 20th American drama
Cultural forms of American Liberalism
Literature and the Environment
Law and literature

education

Ph. D Harvard University (1997)

M. A. Harvard University (1991)

B.A. University of Pennsylvania (1988)

selected publications

Just Words: Lillian Hellman, Mary McCarthy, and the Failure of Public Conversation in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011; paperback, 2012).

Seeing Things, from Shakespeare to Pixar (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011).

The Portable Theater: American Literature and the Nineteenth-Century Stage (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999; paperback edition, 2002).

 Books Edited (selected)

Reading Modern Drama (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012).

Miller, Arthur. Broken Glass. Student Critical Edition, editor and author of introduction, commentary, and notes (London: Methuen, 2011).

courses

Individual Studies: Adaptation
American Literature
Drama: Form and Style
History of Western Theatre from the Renaissance to 1900
Modern Drama to World War II
Comedies to Capitalism
Tragedy and Melodrama in Cold War American Fiction and Film