JOHN FUEGI, Professor of Comparative Literature, Clara and Robert Vambery Distinguished Professor of Comparative Studies and MITH Fellow, holds a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California. In the same year as he graduated with an honors degree in Comparative Literature, the first documentary film he scripted and directed was shown at the San Francisco Film Festival. Much of Fuegi's work has been concentrated in the modern period,but he has also worked in the 12th century on Hildegard Von Bingen and in the 19th century on ADA, Countess Lovelace, and Charles Babbage, computer pioneers. He has written three books and co-edited fourteen other books on the Brecht circle. His Brecht & Co.: Sex, Politics, and the Making of the Modern Drama (Grove, 1994) was named a "Notable Book of the Year" in 1994 by the New York Times and John Simon of New York Magazine called it "one of the most important critical studies of the century." Fuegi's film work has included (with Mitchell Lifton) production of the "Beckett Directs Beckett" television series; Waiting for Godot won the Blue Ribbon Award at the American Film and Video Festival. "Red Ruth: That Deadly Longing," a film Fuegi co-directed and co-scripted, won in 1993 both the Danish Television Oscar and the Silver Diploma of the Prix Futura Competition in Berlin. Among his academic awards are grants from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, and from the American Council of Learned Societies.  In  1996, Fuegi received the feature film award from the International Documentary Association for his film “The War Within:  A Portrait of Virginia Woolf.”  In 1999 his film “In the Symphony of the World:  A Portrait of Hildegard of Bingen” won the Silver Documentary Award at the Philadelphia INT. Film Festival.  

jf36@umail.umd.edu