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Robert Meagher

Guest Artist, Playwright

Headshot of Robert Meagher

Contact Information

Salem Campus

Address
900 State Street
Salem  Oregon  97301
U.S.A.

Biography

Robert Meagher, professor of humanities, holds an A.B. from the University of Notre Dame and an A.M. from the University of Chicago. He has held regular appointments at Indiana University and the University of Notre Dame. He has held visiting chairs and professorships at numerous colleges and universities, including Trinity College Dublin, Yale, the University of Missouri, the University of Tennessee, and Willamette University. 

His publications include over a dozen books, as well as a number of translations (Aeschylus and Euripides) and original plays. His most recent books are Herakles Gone Mad: Rethinking Heroism in an Age of Endless War and Ancient Greece: An Explorer’s Guide. 

He has offered workshops on the translation and contemporary production of Greek drama at a number of colleges and universities, here and abroad, and has himself directed productions of ancient dramas at such venues as the Samuel Beckett Centre, Dublin, the Center for the Performing Arts, Kansas City, MO, and the Nandan Centre for the Performing Arts in Kolkota, India.

Robert Meagher has been appointed as a commissioner for the Truth Commission on Conscience in War,

a national coalition of religious, academic, advocacy, and veterans groups. The commission’s stated goal is “to honor and protect freedom of conscience for our nation’s service members.”

The commission held its first public meeting on March 21, 2010, at Riverside Church in New York City, the location of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s historic “Beyond Vietnam” speech. Commissioners received testimony from recent veterans, religious leaders, and legal experts about issues of conscience facing members of the United States Armed Forces serving in war.

In recent years, Professor Meagher has directed and participated in a range of events and programs concerned with healing the spiritual and psychological wounds of war in individual veterans and in their families and communities.

In 2006, he organized Nostoi: Stories of War and Return, a series of public lectures and events. Educational, state, civic, and grassroots organizations in the Pioneer Valley collaborated on Nostoi, creating a series that blended the experience of the returning soldier with the enduring relevance and healing force of ancient literature.

Meagher also co-directed a project funded by the Mass Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities to use literature to help veterans and their caregivers address the wounds of war.

Willamette University

Theatre

Address
M. Lee Pelton Theatre
Willamette University
900 State Street
Salem Oregon 97301 U.S.A.
Phone
503-370-6222