Matthew Roudané
Regents' Professor English- Education
Ph.D., University of Oregon, 1982
- Specializations
American Drama, Modern Drama, American Literature
- Biography
Matthew Roudané is Regents’ Professor of English and a Faculty Affiliate in the College of the Art’s School of Film, Media, and Theatre. He teaches courses in American Drama, Modern Drama, and American Literature. After being promoted to Professor in 1993, Roudané served as departmental Chair from 2002-2012. A recipient of Fulbright awards, Roudané taught as a Fulbright Scholar at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, in 2004-05, and as a Senior Fulbright Specialist, at El Escorial, Spain, in 2007. He also received a Fulbright to teach at Moscow State University in the Soviet Union in 1989. For years Roudané served as an adviser for the Fulbright Global and Specialist Programs, which is part of the U. S. Council for the International Exchange of Scholars. He has delivered numerous keynote and guest lectures throughout the United States and abroad, in Canada, Costa Rica, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Morocco, Portugal, Romania, and Spain. He was Visiting Professor at the Université de Toulouse Jean Jaurès, France, in Spring 2009 and in Spring 2011.
Roudané had the honor of working professionally in the theater with the legendary actor, writer, and director Joseph Chaikin. Roudané served as dramaturge for 7 Stages Theatre’s productions of Albee’s A Delicate Balance and Miller’s Broken Glass, both of which Chaikin directed. Major theaters throughout the world often consult Roudané about their productions of American plays and use excerpts from his books as they prepare information for theatergoers. Roudané enjoys interviewing writers, and he’s had conversations with a few of America’s best: Edward Albee, Saul Bellow, Karen Finley, David Mamet, Arthur Miller, Sam Shepard and Naomi Wallace. He also interviewed the Spanish writer Rosa Montero in Madrid.
Over the years he has worked on numerous editorial and advisory boards of scholarly journals, including PMLA, the Tennessee Williams Annual Review, the Arthur Miller Journal, the Edward Albee Review, Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad Complutense (Spain), Miranda, Revue Pluridisplinaire du Monde Anglophone (France), and, among others, L’Ordinaire des Amériques (France). He was the Editor of the South Atlantic Review from 1994-2013 and is Advisory Series Editor for Methuen Drama (London). Roudané is one of the founding members of the Edward Albee Society, headquartered at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York City.
He has published a number of books and essays on various aspects of American drama, some of which appear below.
- Publications
Books:
The Cambridge Introduction to Arthur Miller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, in progress).
Edward Albee: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
American Drama, 1960-Present: A Critical History (New York: Twayne, 1996; paperback edition, 1997).
‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’: Necessary Fictions, Terrifying Realities (Boston: Twayne, 1990). Reproduced on CD-ROM, 1996.
Understanding Edward Albee (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1987).
Books Edited:
The Collected Essays of Arthur Miller (London: Bloomsbury, 2015). Revised and Expanded Edition, 2017.
The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary American Playwrights (London: Methuen/ Bloomsbury, 2014). Co-edited with Christopher Innes, Martin Middeke, and Peter Paul Schnierer.
Drama Essentials: An Anthology of Plays (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2008).
The Cambridge Companion to Sam Shepard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Reprinted in Chinese edition, 2001.
Approaches to Teaching Miller’s ‘Death of a Salesman’ (New York: Modern Language Association 1995).
Public Issues, Private Tensions: Contemporary American Drama (New York: AMS Press, 1993).
American Dramatists: Contemporary Authors Bibliographic Series, Vol. 3 (Detroit: Gale Research, 1989).
Conversations with Arthur Miller (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1987). Reproduced in electronic on-line version 2000.
Selected Articles, Book Chapters, Book Reviews, and Interviews“Why Death of a Salesman Is Important,” The Arthur Miller Journal, 19, number 2 (Autumn 2024), Forthcoming.
“Arthur Miller, Journalist” in Arthur Miller in Context eds. Susan Abbotson and Joshua Polster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming, 2025).
“Arthur Miller, Theater Critic” in Arthur Miller in Context eds. Susan Abbotson and Joshua Polster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming, 2025).
“Edward Albee, Absurdist,” in The Routledge Companion to Absurdist Literature ed., Michael Y. Bennett (New York: Routledge, 2024): 239-248.
"Toward a Radical Theater: An Interview with Naomi Wallace,” Five Points 22, number 1 (Spring 2023): 8-30.
"Edward Albee, Absurdist" in The Routledge Companion to Absurdist Literature ed., Michael Y. Bennett (New York: Routledge, forthcoming, 2024).
Toward a Radical Theater: An Interview with Naomi Wallace, Five Points 22, number 1 (Spring 2023): 8-30.
Staging America: Twenty-First Century Dramatists the Theatre of Tennessee Williams", by Christopher Bigsby (London: Methuen 2020), in Modern Drama 64, No. 2 (Summer 2021): 238-240. Book Review.
“Arthur Miller, Essayist,” in Arthur Miller for the Twenty-First Century: Contemporary Views of his Plays and Ideas, eds. Stephen Marino and David Palmer, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).
The Theatre of Tennessee Williams, by Brenda Murphy (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), in Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 30, No. 1 (Fall 2015): 117-118. Book Review.
“El lenguaje en Glengarry Glen Ross,” Pygmalion: Revista de Teatro General y Comparado, Madrid, Ediciones Clásicas, 5 (2013): 43-60.
“Death of a Salesman and the Poetics of Arthur Miller,” in The Cambridge Companion to Arthur Miller, Second Edition, ed. Christopher Bigsby (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010): 63-88.
“A Brief Overview of World Theater, the Ancients to the Present,” in Drama Essentials: An Anthology of Plays, ed. Matthew Roudané (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2008): 1-16.
“Safe at Home?: August Wilson’s Fences,” in The Cambridge Companion to August Wilson, ed. Christopher Bigsby (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007): 135-144.
“An Interview with Karen Finley,” Five Points 11 (2007): 20-37.
“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?: Toward the Marrow,” in The Cambridge Companion to Edward Albee, ed. Stephen J. Bottoms (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005): 39-58.
“Betrayal and Friendship: David Mamet’s American Buffalo,” in The Cambridge Companion to David Mamet, ed. Christopher Bigsby (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004): 57-73.
“Between the Real and the Imaginary: The Theater of Arthur Miller,” in Arthur Miller: Visiones Desde El Nuevo Milenio, eds. Juan I. Guijarro y Ramón Espejo (València: Bibliotheca Javier Coy d’estudis nord-americans, 2004): 81-86.
“Global Challenges, Regional Responses: The Theater of Sam Shepard,” Contemporary Theatre and Drama in English X (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2003): 31-45.
“Something Out of Nothing: An Interview with David Mamet,” reprinted in David Mamet en Conversación (Barcelona: Alba Editorial, 2005, a Spanish translation of David Mamet in Conversation,” ed. Leslie Kane (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001): 46-53.
“Sam Shepard’s The Late Henry Moss,” in The Cambridge Companion to Sam Shepard, ed. Matthew Roudané (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002): 279-291.
“Plays and Playwrights Since 1970,” in The Cambridge History of American Theater and Drama, Vol. III: Post-World War II to the 1990s, eds. Don Wilmeth and Christopher Bigsby (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000): 331-418.
Films
Arthur Miller and ‘Death of a Salesman’ (a 90-minute educational film narrated by Matthew Roudané. Produced by Christopher Tudor, MASSOLIT films, London. 2025