About
Victor Udwin, associate professor of German and comparative literature, has a passion for ancient texts, which he teaches in a variety of courses. His research focuses on developing and demonstrating a new technique for literary and film study, which he also teaches in many of his courses, including Gangster Films. His 1999 book, “Between Two Armies; the place of the duel in epic culture,” discovers a common cultural system handed down from the end of the Bronze Age by stories recorded in numerous languages, from Ancient Greek to Old and Middle High German, Old English, Hebrew and Persian. His work of the past two decades focuses on reconstructing a heretofore unrecognized argument in Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus. He is currently helping his honors students ready student research, collected over many years, on The Electra Project. Applying Udwin’s technique to all three Greek tragedies that tell the story of Electra and Orestes working together to kill Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, this student research discovers that these three works take different positions on the same issue, which revolves around the role of religion in Greek society.
Education
- Ph.D., The University of California, Berkeley
- Dissertation: “Experience Interrupted: The Dynamics of Literary Interpretation”
Research interests and areas of expertise
- Literary & film study, theory and practice
- Epic poetry
- Tragedy
- Gangster films