Rate My Professor Damien Keane

Damien Keane is Associate Professor of English in the Department of English, College of Arts and Sciences, at the University at Buffalo, where he joined as Assistant Professor in 2005 and was promoted in 2013. He earned a Ph.D. in English from the University of Pennsylvania in 2005 with a dissertation titled 'Dictating Terms: Irish Writing, Criticism, and the Problem of Information, 1933-1953,' an M.A. in English focusing on Irish Writing from Queen’s University Belfast with distinction in 1997, and an A.B. in English from Vassar College with general and departmental honors in 1995. His research interests encompass Anglophone modernism, Irish writing and culture, sound technologies such as radio and recording, the history of material textuality and media, and the sociology of literature and institutions.

Keane authored the monograph Ireland and the Problem of Information: Irish Writing, Radio, Late Modernist Communication, published by Pennsylvania State University Press in 2014 as part of the Refiguring Modernism series; it received the 2015 Robert Rhodes Prize for Book on Literature from the American Conference for Irish Studies. Other key publications include 'Amplification: At Home with Marlene Dietrich Overseas' in The Edinburgh Companion to Modernism and Technology (Edinburgh University Press, 2022), 'His Re-Mastered Voice: Joyce for Vinyl' in Science, Technology, and Irish Modernism (Syracuse University Press, 2019), 'Time Made Audible: Irish Stations and Radio Modernism' in A History of Irish Modernism (Cambridge University Press, 2019), 'Contrary Regionalisms and Noisy Correspondences: The BBC in Northern Ireland circa 1949' in Modernist Cultures (2015), and 'Poetry, Music, and Reproduced Sound' in The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Poetry (Oxford University Press, 2012). He has received the Society Fellowship from Cornell University’s Society for the Humanities (2011-2012), Faculty Research Fellowship from the University at Buffalo Humanities Institute (2009-2010), and Dean’s Distinguished Teaching Award from the University of Pennsylvania (2004-2005). Keane has held significant administrative roles, including Associate Chair of the English Department (2020-2022), Director of Graduate Studies (2017-2020 and 2022-present), Chair of the Faculty Senate Committee on Libraries (2016-2020), and Co-Director of the Modernisms Research Workshop at the UB Humanities Institute (2016-2021). He serves on the Executive Committee of the Modern Language Association’s LLC Irish Forum (Chair, 2022-2023).