Mark Hodin

Professor Hodin teaches courses in American literature, drama, ethnic writing, criticism, and first-year composition, including classes that fulfill the diversity and advanced writing intensive core curriculum attributes. Drawing on his research and scholarship in US theater history and cultural studies, his classes emphasize the social reception of writing, highlighting rhetoric in composition, performance in drama, and the critical response to literature.

Recently, Professor Hodin contributed a chapter on melodrama and modernity to The Oxford Handbook of American Drama (2016), and he wrote an essay about the American theatrical producer David Belasco for Wrestling With Shylock (2017), an international collection of Jewish perspectives on Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, published by Cambridge University Press. Away from work, he enjoys Tae Kwon Do, softball, and spending time with his family.

Awards

Gerald Kahan Scholar’s Prize, awarded annually by the American Society for Theatre
Research for the best essay written and published in English in a refereed scholarly journal.

Publications

“David Belasco’s 1922 Production of The Merchant of Venice 1922." Wrestling With Shylock: Jewish Responses to The Merchant of Venice, edited by Edna Nahshon and Michael Shapiro, Cambridge University Press, 2017, pp. 119-139.

“Late Melodrama.” The Oxford Handbook of American Drama, edited by Jeffrey H. Richards with Heather S. Nathans, Oxford University Press, 2016, 159-172.

“Lorraine Hansberry’s Absurdity: The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window.” Contemporary Literature, vol. 50, no. 4, 2009, pp. 742-774.

“The Disavowal of Ethnicity: Legitimate Theatre and the Social Construction of Literary Value in Turn-of-the-Century America.” Theatre Journal, vol. 52, no. 2, 2000, pp. 211-226.

“Class, Consumption, and Ethnic Performance in Vaudeville.” Prospects: An Annual of American Cultural Studies, vol. 22, 1997, 193-210.