W. B. Worthen, Alice Brady Pels Professor in the Arts, is Professor and Chair of the Department of Theater at Barnard College, Columbia University. He is the author of Shakespeare and the Force of Modern Performance (Cambridge University Press, 2003) Shakespeare and the Authority of Performance (Cambridge University Press, 1997), Modern Drama and the Rhetoric of Theater (University of California Press, 1992), The Idea of the Actor: Drama and the Ethics of Performance (Princeton University Press, 1984), Modern Drama: Plays, Criticism, Theory (Wadsworth, 1995), and of many articles on modern drama, Shakespeare, and theories of performance. Professor Worthen received his B. A. in English from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and his Ph.D. in English from Princeton University, and has held research fellowships form the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment of the Humanities. He is past editor of Theatre Journal and current coeditor of Modern Drama.
