Matthew Wilson Smith

Biography

Associate Professor, Theater & Performance Studies and German ( B.A. Brown University, 1993; M.A. University of Chicago, 1995; M.A., Ph.D. Columbia University 2002) has previously held professorships at Boston University and Cornell University as well as visiting positions at Johannes Gutenberg-Universität (Mainz) and Columbia University. His interests include modern theatre and performance, modernism and mass media, and relations among technology, science, and the arts. His book The Total Work of Art: From Bayreuth to Cyberspace (2007) presents a history and theory of the Gesamtkunstwerk in relation to technology and mass culture, placing such diverse figures as Wagner, Moholy-Nagy, Brecht, Riefenstahl, Disney, Warhol, and contemporary cyber-artists within a genealogy of totalizing performance. He is also the editor of Georg Büchner: The Major Works, which appeared as a Norton Critical Edition in 2011. His current book project explores historical intersections between the performing arts and the neurological sciences and examines the construction of a “neural subject” over the course of the nineteenth century. This project was recently supported by the Society for the Humanities at Cornell, where he served as a Fellow in 2012-13. His plays have been performed at The Eugene O’Neill Theatre, The Ontological Theater at St. Mark’s, Henry Street Settlement, and other stages.

Research Interest

Theater & Performance Studies and German