Matthew J Roberts, Assistant Professor and Literatures and Languages Librarian

Matthew Roberts is Assistant Professor and Literatures and Languages Librarian and has faculty appointments in the University Library and the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory. Prior to his appointment at UIUC, he held a professional position at the University of California, Irvine as the Subject Specialist for the Critical Theory Archive and Research Librarian for Comparative Literature, Critical Theory, English, and European Studies. He belongs to a number of professional organizations, including Modern Language Association and the American Comparative Literature Associaton, regularly presenting research at each organization's annual conference. He is an active member of Association of College and Research Libraries' Literatures in English Section (ACLR LES), serving as co-editor of its publication, Biblio-Notes. Finally, along with UIUC colleagues Mara Thacker and Sarah Christensen, he edits the Journal of Library Outreach and Engagement.

Attic Tragedy

Modern Drama 

Trauma

Performance Studies 

Psychoanalysis

Deconstruction

Information Literacy Instruction/Humanities Based Research Methods

My scholarship draws from the insights of psychoanalysis and deconstruction to study twentieth- and twenty-first century dramatic literature and theatrical performance. My work studies trauma's profound effect --personal, historical, and otherwise-- on playwrights who challenged the tenants of pre-existing theatrical genres, most notably classicism, naturalism, and realism, and their respective conventions. By problematizing theater's ability to respond to traumatic experience with such conventions, modern and contemporary drama often facilitate divergent and subjective responses to traumatic experience and their implications. Theater and performance thus enable individuals and communities to cultivate more properly inclusive social relations as they give time and space for people to begin collectively to bear what would otherwise be unbearable.

My publications appear in numerous academically prestigious journals, including Comparative Drama, Modern Drama and New Theatre Quarterly. I am currently serving as guest editor of a special issue of Modern Drama, entitled "New Approaches to Harold Pinter."

Postdramatic Theater

Community Based Theater

Art Therapy

Drone Music