Patrick Bixby
-
Phone: 602-543-3010
-
-
FAB S329C Phoenix, AZ 85069-7100
-
Mail code: 2151Campus: West
-
Patrick Bixby (he/him/his) is ASU Foundation Professor and Associate Director in the School of Humanities, Arts & Cultural Studies (SHArCS) at Arizona State University. His scholarly interests span several interconnected fields, including mobility studies, modernist studies, Irish studies, and postcolonial theory and criticism. Dr. Bixby teaches courses in these areas and in the history of the novel, the history of film, the history of literary criticism, contemporary critical theories, and methods of interdisciplinary research.
His recent research in mobility studies includes License to Travel: A Cultural History of the Passport (U of California P, 2022), which examines the passports of artists and intellectuals, ancient messengers and modern migrants, to reveal how these seemingly humble documents implicate us in larger narratives about identity, mobility, citizenship, and state authority (editions and translations have been published in Argentina, India, Taiwan, Russia, South Korea, and Iraq); and Unaccompanied Traveler: The Writings of Kathleen M. Murphy (Syracuse UP, 2022), which collects a series of twelve travelogues by an extraordinary but little-known Irish writer, and presents them with a wide-ranging introduction, extensive notes, and detailed maps. His articles and interviews on travel, migration, and mobility have appeared in publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The Conversation, Fortune, Meduza, Revista Ñ, and Afar. He is currently writing a book on the first women-only crew to sail across the Pacific and editing the memoirs of pioneering Irish aviator Lady Mary Heath.
Dr. Bixby has worked extensively at the intersection of Irish studies and modernist studies. His recent book Nietzsche and Irish Modernism (Manchester UP, 2022) demonstrates how the ideas of the controversial German philosopher played a crucial role in the emergence and evolution of a distinctly Irish brand of modernist culture. Previously, with Gregory Castle, he co-edited A History of Irish Modernism (Cambridge UP, 2019), a collection of 24 essays that traces a long historical arc through Irish cultural production from the 1890s to the 1960s; and Standish O'Grady's Cuculain (Syracuse UP, 2016), a scholarly edition of the Irish historian's writing on the mythic hero. He has also published articles on Irish modernism in journals such as Modernism/Modernity, Modernist Cultures, and Irish Studies Review.
Dr. Bixby has long pursued a more specific interest in the life and work of Irish Nobel laureate Samuel Beckett, serving as Vice President (2021-23) and President (2023-25) of the Samuel Beckett Society and as Chair of the Advisory Board for the Letters of Samuel Beckett. His latest book, Quotidian Beckett: Art of Everyday Life (Cambridge UP, 2026), explores the writer’s enduring preoccupation with the quotidian rhythms of modern life, including the experiences of boredom, routine, habit, and consumption. Dr. Bixby’s first monograph, Samuel Beckett and the Postcolonial Novel (Cambridge UP, 2009), places Beckett’s novels in the context of the newly founded Irish Free State to examine their confrontation with the legacies of both Irish nationalism and British imperialism.
His essays on Beckett have appeared in the Journal of Beckett Studies, Twentieth-Century Literature, and Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, as well as in collections such as The Irish Bildungsroman (Syracuse UP, 2025), Samuel Beckett and Translation (Edinburgh UP, 2021), A History of Irish Modernism (Cambridge UP, 2019), A History of the Modernist Novel (Cambridge UP, 2015), Beckett in Context (Cambridge UP, 2013), and Beckett and Ireland (Cambridge UP, 2010). In 2018, he co-edited a special issue of the Journal of Beckett Studies, "(Dis)embodied Beckett," with Seán Kennedy.
Dr. Bixby joined the faculty of ASU’s New College in 2004, after serving as Visiting Assistant Professor of Literature at Claremont McKenna College, and has since held numerous administrative roles at the university. In 2017, after directing several graduate programs and then serving as Director of Graduate Studies for the New College, he became Director of International and Tribal Initiatives, building partnerships with Arizona tribal communities, as well as other universities around the globe. Dr. Bixby then served as Faculty Lead for the BA in Disability Studies and Program Director for both the MA in Interdisciplinary Studies and the MA in English, before becoming Associate Director of the SHArCS in 2025. He served as Resident Director of the USAC summer school program at NUI Galway from 2015 to 2025 and currently serves as Co-Director, with Jacob Meders, of the Native American Summer Arts Workshop at ASU West Valley.
- Ph.D. English, Emory University
- M.A. English, California State University-Long Beach
- B.A. Psychology, University of California-Los Angeles
