Paula R. Backscheider

Brief Bio

I retired in July 2023 after a fifty-year career as a professor at Rollins College, the University of Rochester, and Auburn University. I have begun to live the rich and balanced life that I struggled to protect. Most mornings, I go out with our collie and work in the yard for the first two hours. I weed, prune, move large fallen branches to the street, and enjoy coffee and my Merlin app. I have plenty of time to play croquet and converse with my husband about everything from a biography of Napoleon to his post-pandemic students. Most mornings, I receive messages from friends in the US and Europe. Some are beginning new books, contemplating their own retirements, or writing plays and sharing experiences in book clubs. There are so many things I love to do with my days.  I am still actively reading drafts for former students, reviewing books, and reading manuscripts for journals.  I am reading wonderful scholarly books that friends gave me that I had to rush through or read only selected chapters and varied, interdisciplinary books of the kind listed in the “About Me” section of this website.  I have always loved exercise, and I have two basketball goal setups.

My administrative and committee work was creative, challenging, and deeply satisfying. Most notably, I chaired the Faculty Development Consortium (twelve member institutions including three HBCU’s), the Research Initiative for the Study of Diversity, and even Auburn University’s first university-wide Retention Committee.  My research is driven by interdisciplinary questions about power and social change. By concentrating upon the dynamic coming together of social and public events, literary texts and performances, and the experiences and pursuits of writers, I was often able to make original arguments. In “My Books” drop-down, I share some of the questions and favorite, often hard-won discoveries in each book. I am only the second critic to win both the British Council Prize and the James Russell Lowell Prize from the Modern Language Association of America. My most recent book is Women in Wartime: Theatrical Representations in the Long Eighteenth Century.  It was a finalist for the Barnard Hewitt Award for Outstanding Research in Theatre History. See precis. and post-print index and primary bibliography additions and corrections.