Contact: omealy@hawaii.edu
After nearly fifteen years in administration, first as Acting Associate Dean and then as Interim Dean of the College of Languages, Linguistics, and Literature here at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, I returned to the English department as a full-time teacher and Professor in January, 2011, back to where I began my career as an assistant professor in August, 1978.
One of my two long-term teaching interests is focused on the Victorian period, and I have taught general surveys of the poetry and prose written in Great Britain between 1837-1901, as well as genre and major author courses in the Victorian novel. My other teaching interest is the genre of drama, with a broad interest in world theatre since 1600, with a concentration on modern and contemporary drama since Ibsen.
As a researcher I have worked mostly in those two fields as well. I received my PhD from Stanford with a dissertation on Charles Dickens, and I have published on Dickens, Conrad, and most extensively on the novels of Margaret Oliphant, a popular novelist during the Victorian era but now largely overlooked. I am also the author of a book on the contemporary English playwright Alan Bennett—Alan Bennett: A Critical Introduction (Routledge, 2001). My current research interest is centered on the Victorian theatre, which finally brings together my longstanding but heretofore separate interests in 19th century literature and culture and in theatre and drama.