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Ariel Dorfman, Walter Hines Page Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus of Literature

Ariel Dorfman

Please note: Ariel has left the "Romance Studies" group at Duke University; some info here might not be up to date.

Walter Hines Page Research Professor of Literature and Latin American Studies; has a Licenciatura in Comparative Literature from the Universidad de Chile, Santiago, 1965. He has taught at the Universidad de Chile, the Sorbonne (Paris IV) and the University of Amsterdam. His major publications include the essays, How to Read Donald Duck (in collaboration with Armand Mattlelart, 1971), The Empire's Old Clothes (1983), and Someone Writes to the Future: Essays on Contemporary Latin American Fiction (1991). He is also the author of a collection of poetry, Last Waltz in Santiago and Other Poems of Exile and Disappearance (1988), and In Case of Fire in a Foreign Land: New and Collected Poems from Two Languages (2002), and the memoir, Heading South, Looking North: A Bilingual Journey (1998). His novels include Widows (1983), The Last Song of Manuel Sendero (1986), Mascara (1988), Hard Rain (1990), Konfidenz (1995), The Nanny and the Iceburg (1999), and Blake's Therapy (2001). His plays include Widows (which won a New American Plays Award from the Kennedy Center), and Reader (winner of the Roger L. Stevens Award from the Kennedy Center) which is in production world wide. Death and the Maiden, winner of many awards and also in production worldwide, was made into a Roman Polanski film. Mascara (with son, Rodrigo Dorfman), premiered in Bonn in 1998, and Who's Who (also with Rodrigo Dorfman) premiered in Frankfurt in 1998. He also has created a collection of his plays, The Resistance Trilogy, which includes Death and the Maiden, Reader, and Widows. His most recent non-fiction works include Exorcising Terror: The Incredible, Unending Trial of General Augusto Pinochet (2002), Other Septembers, Many Americas (2004), Desert Memories: Journeys through the Chilean North (2004), and he collaborated on the novel The Burning City, with his youngest son, Joaquin Dorfman. His latest plays include The Other Side and Purgatorio. A documentary feature film based on his life, "A Promise to the Dead: the Exile Journey of Ariel Dorfman," was directed by Peter Raymont in 2007 and shortlisted for an Academy Award for Best Documentary. He has recently begun to work with composers, writing the libretto (in verse) for an operatic version of Death and the Maiden (music by Jonas Forssell), which premiered at Malmo in September of 2008; and the book for Dancing Shadows (music by Eric Woolfson, lead singer and composer of the Alan Parsons Project), which opened in Seoul in July 2007 and went on to win five Korean Tonys. He is currently working on another opera, with the Scottish composer Nigel Osborne, based on a legend of the Upanishads. He has just completed Feeding on Dreams: Confessions of an Uurepentant Exile, the second volume of his memoirs, which will Houghton Mifflin Harcourt will publish in Fall 2011. Prof. Dorfman continues to write regularly for many of the most important newspapers and magazines in the US and abroad, and in 2010 delivered the 8th Annual Nelson Mandela Lecture in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Contact Info:
Office Location:  1316 Campus Drive, 101 Friedl Building, Durham, NC 27708
Office Phone:  (919) 684-6605
Email Address: send me a message
Web Page:  http://www.arieldorfman.com

Education:

Ph.D.University of Chile (Chile)1965
Specialties:

Spanish
Latin-American Studies
Performance Studies
Comparative Studies: Translation, Travel Narratives, Trans-Culturality
Critical Theory, Philosophy
Modern and Contemporary
Globalization, Postmodernity, Contemporaneity
Research Interests:

Walter Hines Page Research Professor of Literature and Latin American Studies; has a Licenciatura in Comparative Literature from the Universidad de Chile, Santiago, 1965. He has taught at the Universidad de Chile, the Sorbonne (Paris IV) and the University of Amsterdam. His major publications include the essays, How to Read Donald Duck (in collaboration with Armand Mattlelart, 1971), The Empire's Old Clothes (1983), and Someone Writes to the Future: Essays on Contemporary Latin American Fiction (1991). He is also the author of a collection of poetry, Last Waltz in Santiago and Other Poems of Exile and Disappearance (1988), and In Case of Fire in a Foreign Land: New and Collected Poems from Two Languages (2002), and the memoir, Heading South, Looking North: A Bilingual Journey (1998). His novels include Widows (1983), The Last Song of Manuel Sendero (1986), Mascara (1988), Hard Rain (1990), Konfidenz (1995), The Nanny and the Iceburg (1999), and Blake's Therapy (2001). His plays include Widows (which won a New American Plays Award from the Kennedy Center), and Reader (winner of the Roger L. Stevens Award from the Kennedy Center) which is in production world wide. Death and the Maiden, winner of many awards and also in production worldwide, was made into a Roman Polanski film. Mascara (with son, Rodrigo Dorfman), premiered in Bonn in 1998, and Who's Who (also with Rodrigo Dorfman) premiered in Frankfurt in 1998. He also has created a collection of his plays, The Resistance Trilogy, which includes Death and the Maiden, Reader, and Widows. His newest works include Exorcising Terror: The Incredible, Unending Trial of General Augusto Pinochet, and the novel The Burning City, which he wrote with his youngest son, Joaquin Dorfman. His latest plays include Purgatory, which opened at the Seattle Repertory Theatre in October 2005, and The Other Side, which opened in New York at the Manhattan Theatre Club in December 2005, starring Rosemary Harris and John Cullum.

Keywords:

Drama • National security • United States--Military policy • War--Psychological aspects

Recent Publications   (More Publications)

  1. Dorfman, A, The Penguin Book of Migration Literature: Departures, Arrivals, Generations, Returns, New York Review of Books, vol. 67 no. 19 (2020), pp. 49-50
  2. Dorfman, A, Mark But This "Oh stay, three lives ...", Massachusetts Review: a Quarterly of Literature, the Arts and Public Affairs, vol. 61 no. 1 (2020), pp. 12-17
  3. Dorfman, A, Advice for Maduro, Nation, vol. 308 no. 6 (March, 2019), pp. 4-+, NATION CO INC
  4. Dorfman, A, Spaniards in Mauthausen: Representations of a Nazi Concentration Camp, 1940-2015, New York Review of Books, vol. 66 no. 18 (2019), pp. 22-24
  5. Dorfman, A, The Impostor: A True Story, New York Review of Books, vol. 66 no. 18 (2019), pp. 22-24


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