Don B. Wilmeth |
Don Wilmeth is Asa Messer Professor Emeritus and emeritus professor of theater and English at Brown University. He retired in 2003 after 36 years, including sixteen as department chair. He holds a courtesy appointment at Keene State College.
Wilmeth is the author, editor, co-editor, or series editor of three dozen books, including the award-winning three-volume Cambridge History of American Theatre. He was series editor of Studies in American Theatre and Drama (Cambridge University Press) for several years. He is editor of Palgrave Macmillan's Studies in Theatre and Performance History and Culture.
A former president of the American Society for Theatre Research and dean emeritus of the College of Fellows of the American Theatre, Wilmeth is also a member of the board of the Theatre Library Association. He has received career and research recognitions from the New England Theatre Conference, the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE), the Society for Theatre Research (UK), the American Society for Theatre Research, and the Theatre Library Association. ATHE also honored him for his work as an editor.
Wilmeth is an actor, a director, and an ardent collector of theater and entertainment ephemera and memorabilia, as well as books on theater history. In 2006, he curated an exhibition drawn from his theater collection at Franklin Pierce College. A pioneer in the serious study of American popular entertainment and an authority on the history of American theater and drama, he has been an on-screen interviewee for PBS specials on Houdini and Annie Oakley
Wilmeth holds a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois.
