Faculty biography - Mark Z. Muggli
Mark Z. Muggli is passionate – both personally and professionally – about both theatre and travel, so he’s excited to be teaching in the ACM London program. He is an enthusiastic theatre-goer, whether he’s attending the Beijing Opera in China, a small guerrilla theatre in Colombia, the Berliner Ensemble in east Berlin (before the Wall came down), or a Czech-language performance in Prague. His theatre involvement also includes scholarly publishing, editing Shakespeare plays, working as a dramaturg, acting, and writing a play. And, of course, teaching: “Drama,” “Ethics in Theatre,” and, for a number of years, “Shakespeare Performed,” an English/Theatre course in which students read Shakespeare’s plays and then mount a production of an abridged version of one play. For the last five years, Muggli has enrolled in college dance classes and has performed in student productions.
In addition to teaching and publishing on travel writing, Muggli has had opportunities for considerable personal travel. He has studied or taught abroad for a year each in Munich, Bogota, Durham, and Nottingham, as well as spending research years in Boston, Austin TX, and Santa Fe. He has also travelled to China, Mexico, Guatemala, and much of Europe.
Muggli’s forty-year academic career includes teaching many study abroad courses. In “At Home with the Wordsworths and Austen,” students read the great Romantics, hike the paths that figure in their literature, and even sleep in their houses in the English Lake District, Alfoxden, Bath, and Hampshire. “English Theatre” includes attending everything from Shakespeare’s second history sequence in Stratford to large-scale West End musicals to small, avant-garde performances in pub theatres and underground London tunnels. In “Dramatic Greece” students do live readings of the Classical Greek plays in the original theatres or at the sites of the plays’ action. He has also led a year-long Luther College program in Nottingham, England.
Muggli discussing the history of walking with his students in the Lake District, Spring 2007.
All of these study abroad courses have emphasized walking as a way to fully experience place, and walking will also be a significant part of the ACM London program. Muggli’s excitement about walking, architecture, and landscape has led him to develop an on-campus course in “Walking Books,” in which students read authors like Bill Bryson and Jane Austen while learning to love moving their own bodies through observed spaces.
Muggli has taught many of his study abroad courses with his wife Carol Gilbertson, Luther College Professor Emerita of English, who will also be joining him for the spring 2013 ACM London program.
At Luther College, Muggli has served as Associate Academic Dean, Honors Program Director, Director of the college core program Paideia, editor of the faculty journal Agora, and English Department Head. He has just been named the Dennis M. Jones Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Humanities for 2011-13. His Jones project, “Our Shakespeare: Renewing Connections,” includes developing a wide range of Shakespeare-focused activities for Luther College faculty and students.