Julia Obert

Biography

Julia Obert works in the areas of postcolonial literature and theory, Irish literature, poetry and poetics, environmental humanities, and critical theory, especially affect theory and sound studies.  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.  Her third book, Irish Joy: Resistant Affects in Contemporary Irish Literature, is forthcoming from Liverpool University Press in April 2026, and she is now working on a fourth book manuscript entitled Vulnerable Soundscapes: Archives of Climate Grief.  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 family and friends and her pup Frankie.

 

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
Migrant Literatures

Contemporary Irish Literature

Contemporary Literature: Roots & Routes

Affect Theory

 

Selected Publications/Awards
Last 10 Years:

“Queering Irish Joy: Seán Hewitt’s Rapture’s Road.” Journal of Modern Literature 49.2. 2026.
This Year (poetry chapbook). Bottlecap Press. 2025.

“Toward Irish Joy: Affect and Resistance in Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s A Ghost in the Throat.”  Contemporary Literature 64.2. 2024.

The Making and Unmaking of Colonial Cities: Urban Planning, Imperial Power, and the Improvisational Itineraries of the Poor. Oxford University Press. 2023.

“Vulnerability in Contemporary Irish Literature: From Climate Change to Troubles Tourism.” Textual Practice 38.7. 2023.

“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. 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. 2020.

“Troubles Literature and the End of the Troubles.”   Irish Literature in Transition, Vol. 6, 1980-2020.  Ed. Eric Falci and Paige Reynolds, Cambridge UP. 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. 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. 2017.

“What We Talk About When We Talk About Intimacy.” Emotion, Space and Society 24. 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. 2016.

Michael J. Durkan Prize for Books on Language & Culture (for The Making and Unmaking of Colonial Cities), 2024

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