Professor and Assistant Chair for the Department of English
Hoyt 147/244, jobert@uwyo.edu
Biography
Julia Obert studies postcolonial literature and theory, Irish literature, poetry and poetics, 20th century British literature, and critical theory. Her first book, Postcolonial Overtures: The Politics of Sound in Contemporary Northern Irish Poetry, was published by Syracuse University Press in 2015, and her second, The Making and Unmaking of Colonial Cities: Urban Planning, Imperial Power, and the Improvisational Itineraries of the Poor, by Oxford University Press in 2023. She is now working on two additional book projects: Vulnerable Soundscapes: Archives of Climate Grief and Irish Joy: Resistant Affects in Contemporary Irish Literature. Her essays have appeared in a number of postcolonial studies, Irish studies, and theory journals and in various edited volumes. Outside of work, Julia likes to ski, travel, play fiddle, and hike with her partner, her two stepdaughters, and their pup.
Education
Ph.D., University of California, Irvine
M.A., University of British Columbia
B.A., University of Western Ontario
Recent and Upcoming Courses
Postcolonial Literature and Theory
Contemporary Irish Literature
Contemporary Literature: Roots & Routes
Affect Theory
Reading the Body
Selected Publications/Awards
The Making and Unmaking of Colonial Cities: Urban Planning, Imperial Power, and the Improvisational Itineraries of the Poor. Oxford University Press (2023).
“Climate Change, Troubles Tourism, and the Politics of Worlding in Contemporary Northern Irish Literature.” Forthcoming in Textual Practice.
“Northern Irish Poetry.” The Cambridge History of Irish Poetry. Cambridge UP. Forthcoming.
“Everything / we husband is always shedding”: Intimacy, Distance, and the Politics of Migration in Ailbhe Darcy’s Insistence.” Irish Studies Review. 30.3: 280-97 (2022).
With Nolan Goetzinger, “Built Environments and Lived Ecologies in Contemporary Irish Poetry, 1998-Present.” Ed. Malcolm Sen. The Cambridge History of Irish Literature and the Environment, Cambridge UP (2021).
“‘Body on the Wire’: Leontia Flynn on Living Through Divided Politics.” Irish University Review 50.2: 276-88 (2020).
“Troubles Literature and the End of the Troubles.” Irish Literature in Transition, Vol. 6, 1980-2020. Ed. Eric Falci and Paige Reynolds. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 65-80 (2020).
“Yes Scotland?: The Political Ecologies of the Scottish Borders in Walter Scott’s Minstrelsy
of the Scottish Border and Lay of the Last Minstrel and in Contemporary Scottish Poetry.” Scottish Literary Review 11.2: 81-99. (2019)
“Ciaran Carson’s Theory of Relativity.” Etudes Irlandaises 42.1: 123-38 (2017).
“The Entomological Imagination: Thomas Kinsella’s Insect Poems.” Irish University Review 47.2: 360-72 (2017).
“What We Talk About When We Talk About Intimacy.” Emotion, Space and Society 24: 25-32 (2016).
“Architectural Space in Windhoek, Namibia: Monumentalization, Fortification, Subversion.” Postmodern Culture 26.1 (2016).
“The Architectural Uncanny: An Essay in the Postcolonial Unhomely.” Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 18.1: 86-106 (2016).
Postcolonial Overtures: The Politics of Sound in Contemporary Northern Irish Poetry. Syracuse University Press (2015).
UW Extraordinary Merit in Research Award, 2023
UW College of Arts & Sciences Student Ambassadors’ Thumbs-Up Award, 2018
UW Distinguished Faculty Graduate Mentor Award, 2018
