Marilyn Moriarty

Marilyn Moriarty

Professor

Marilyn Moriarty Marilyn Moriarty

Marilyn Moriarty received her doctorate from the University of California, Irvine, with a dissertation on Shakespeare and a second emphasis in literary theory. She compiled the text of two Shakespeare plays for drama anthologies and co-edited a collection of essays on postmodern architecture. She is the author of Writing Science through Critical Thinking, a scientific writing textbook, and Moses Unchained, which won the Associated Writing Programs Creative Nonfiction Award. Her essays have been published in The Antioch Review, The Chattahoochee Review, Creative Nonfiction, The Kenyon Review, Raritan, River Teeth, and others. Three have been named “Notable” by editors of the Best American Essays series.

She won the 2014 Faulkner-Wisdom Gold Medal for the essay. Her stories have won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize, the Peregrine Prize for fiction, and the University of Utah novella contest.

Areas of Expertise

  • Shakespeare
  • Literary Theory
  • Literature of the Holocaust
  • Creative Nonfiction

Courses Taught

  • Creative NonFiction
  • Holocaust Literature
  • Literary History and Theory I
  • Literature of the Renaissance
  • Major British Writers I and II
  • Medieval Literature
  • Monsters and Marvels
  • Roots of Modern Drama
  • Global Shakespeare
  • Madness in Shakespeare
  • Shakespeare’s Bookshelf
  • Shakespeare and the Theater
  • Shakespeare’s Kings and Clowns
  • Shakespeare’s Rome
  • Shakespeare’s Tragedies
  • Shakespeare’s Women
  • The Stranger in Shakespeare
  • Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Dramatic Literature
  • Talking Animals
  • Textual Construction of Gender
  • [Writing about] Three Genres
  • Topics in Literary Theory: Representation
  • The Wild Child (short term)

Accomplishments

  • Inaugural Berry Professor of the Liberal Arts, 2002-2005.
  • Three essays named “Notable” by the editors of The Best American Essays series: 2016, 2019, 2020.
  • Keynote Speaker, P.O.W./M.I.A. Day,  Bedford D-Day Memorial. September 21, 2018.
  • Faulkner-Wisdom Writing Competition. First place in the essay category. Fall, 2014.

Research Interests

  • Shakespeare
  • Literary theory, especially the question of the animal
  • Literature of the Holocaust
  • Creative nonfiction

Education

  • Ph.D. University of California, Irvine 1990
  • M.A. University of Florida 1980
  • B.A. University of Florida 1976
  • Merit certificate, linguistics. Edinburgh University (Scotland)

Publications & Articles

  • BOOKS
  • Moses Unchained, memoir. University of Georgia Press. March 1998. AWP award for Creative Nonfiction.
  • Writing Science through Critical Thinking. Jones and Bartlett Publishers. Preliminary editions 1995, 1996; final edition June 1997.
  • EDITIONS
  • Co-Editor, Critical Architecture and Contemporary Culture. With William Lillyman and David Neuman. Oxford University Press, New York. November 1994. Collection of essays by architects and theorists, including Ann Bergren, Frank Gehry, Jacques Derrida, Peter Eisenman, J. Hillis Miller, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Robert A.M. Stern, Paul Zajfen and Michael Wilford.
  • “The Search for Common Ground.” Introduction to Critical Architecture and Contemporary Culture. Edited by William Lillyman, Marilyn Moriarty, and David Neuman. Oxford University Press, New York. November, 1994: 3-11.
  • Editor, Shakespeare’s Hamlet in Twelve Plays for Theatre, ed. Robert Cohen. Mountain View, California: Mayfield Publishing Company, 1994: 75-148. Compiled and annotated play text.
  • Editor, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in Eight Plays for Theatre, ed. Robert Cohen. Mountain View, California: Mayfield Publishing Company, 1988: 75-150. Compiled and annotated play text.
  • CREATIVE
  • “Bone Lab,” Dappled Things, October 2023.
  • “The Ass of Otranto,” story, Among Animals 3: The Lives of Humans and Animals in Contemporary Short Fiction. Ashland Creek Press. 2022. Reprinted from J-Journal: New Writings on Justice. John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY. Issue 21. Spring, 2019.
  • “A Beautiful Mess: Paris, 1945,” memoir excerpt, War, Literature, and the Arts. Volume 33, 2021.
  • “Bent Necessity,” short story, The New Haven Review. Vol 24. Spring, 2020.
  • “Road-Rage Jane in Torino,” essay on the Shroud of Turin. Raritan: A Quarterly Review, journal of Rutgers University. Volume XXXIX, Number 1. Summer 2019.
  • “Cut By Tearing,” essay, The Chattahoochee Review, December 2018. “You Are Where You Eat,” France-Amérique, October 3, 2018. Previously published and recorded on “The Dirty Spoon.”
  • “Romancing the Bird,” essay, River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative. Vol. 19 No. 1, Fall 2017. The propagation and training of a peregrine-prairie falcon hybrid, falconry practices, past and present; Shakespeare’s Othello and Taming of the Shrew.
  • “Territorial Imperative in Planaria,” essay, Creative Nonfiction, Spring, 2015.
  • “Swerves,” Faulkner Society. Gold medal for the essay. Anthologized in Borderlands and Crossroads: Writing the Mother Land, edited by Jane Satterfield and Laurie Kruk. Demeter Press, 2016. Recorded for NPR January 21, 2015. Air date not yet determined.
  • “Reservoir,” essay, About Place. Online journal. Voices of the Human Spirit issue.
  • “Backstory to The Taking of Dead Horse Hollow,” Antioch Review Blog. August 8, 2014.
  • The Taking of Dead Horse Hollow: Eminent Domain Abuse,” essay, Antioch Review. Spring, 2013
  • “Bladed Lady,” Honorable Mention. Winning Writers Sports Prose contest. November, 2012.