John O'Brien

(1998)
Associate Professor
Restoration/Eighteenth-Century Literature, Cultural Studies

Associate Chair of the Department

Degrees

Ph.D. University of Chicago, 1995
M.A. University of Chicago, 1990
B.A. Williams College, 1984

Books

  • Harlequin Britain: Pantomime and Entertainment, 1690-1760 (John Hopkins University Press, 2004).
  • Editor of Susanna Centlivre, The Wonder: A Woman Keeps a Secret (Broadview Press, 2003).

Articles

  • "Pantomime," in The Cambridge Companion to the British Stage, 1740-1830, ed. Jane Moody and Daniel O'Quinn (Cambridge, 2007)
  • "John Locke, Desire, and the Epistemology of Money," British Journal for the History of Philosophy (Fall 2007).
  • Guest Editor, The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, special issue on Theater and Theatricality (2004)
  • "Drama: Genre, Gender, Theater," in Blackwell's Concise Companion to the Restoration and the Eighteenth Century, ed. Cynthia Wall (Blackwell, 2004)
  • "Busy Bodies: The Plots of Susanna Centlivre," in Eighteenth-Century Genre and Culture: Serious Reflections on Occasional Forms: Essays on Eighteenth-Century Literature and Genre in Honor of J. Paul Hunter, ed. Cynthia Wall and Dennis Todd (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2001), 165-89.
  • "Harlequin Britain: Eighteenth-Century British Pantomime and the Cultural Location of Entertainment(s)," Theatre Journal (December 1998).
  • "Union Jack: Amnesia and the Law in Daniel Defoe's Colonel Jack," Eighteenth-Century Studies (Fall 1998).
  • "Grub Street: The Literary and the Literatory in Eighteenth-Century Britain," in Teaching the Eighteenth Century: Three Courses (1998); reprinted in Teaching Literature: From Pedagogy to Practice, ed. Ann Dean and Tanya Agathocleous (2003).
  • "The Character of Credit: Daniel Defoe's Lady Credit, The Fortunate Mistress and the Resources of Inconsistency," ELH 63 (Fall 1996): 603-31.

Conferences

  • “Police, Insurance, Smollett,” Northeast American Society for
    Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Meeting, Washington, DC
    (October 2008)
  • “Serial Form and the Insurantial Imaginary,” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Meeting, Atlanta, GA, April 2007
  • “Infamous Harlequin Mimicry:  Apprentices and the Mass Audience,”
    University of Colorado Center for the Humanities, March 2003 (invited)                       
  • “Why Was Harlequin’s Face Black?” American Society for Eighteenth-
    Century Studies Annual Meeting, New Orleans, April 2001                       
  • “The South Sea Bubble as Turning Point,” meeting of International
    Society for Intellectual History, Chicago, IL, September 21-24, 2000                       
  • “Response:  Defoe and Joyce,” panel on "Defoe and the Revised
    Version of the Rise of the Novel," 10th Congress on the Enlightenment,
    Dublin, Ireland, July 1999                       
  • “Susanna Centlivre and the Reception of the Popular,” NEASECS
    Annual Meeting, Williamstown, Mass., September 1998                       
  • “That's Entertainment!  The Cultural Work of Entertainment in the
    Eighteenth-Century World,” panel organizer and chair, ASECS,
    Notre Dame, IN, April 1998                       
  • “New Approaches to Teaching the Eighteenth Century,” panelorganizer and chair, SCASECS, San Antonio, TX, February 1998

Honors

  • American Council of Learned Societies Fellow, 2000-2001
  • University of Virginia Sesquicentennial Fellow, 2000-2001
  • University of Virginia Teaching Fellow, 1999-2000
  • Fletcher Jones Fellow, The Huntington Library, Summer 1997
  • American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Course Construction Award, 1996-1997
  • Fellow, Interdisciplinary Group for Humanities Studies, Texas A & M University, 1996-1998
  • Mellon Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, 1994-1995
  • Maclean Instructorship, The University of Chicago, Winter 1994