William Arctander O'Brien

German and Comparative Literature

Literature and Philosophy; Romanticism; Critical Theory.

William Arctander O’Brien joined the Literature Department in 1986. He received his Ph.D. from The Humanities Center at The Johns Hopkins University after study at the Universität Stuttgart, and his B.A. from Cornell after study at the Université de Paris.

O’Brien’s teaching was recognized with numerous awards from Revelle and Eleanor Roosevelt Colleges, as well as the UCSD Alumni Association Award for Distinguished Teaching (2005).  He taught widely in the Literature Department: in Comparative Literature (Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, the Frankfurt School), German Literature (Romanticism, Enlightenment, Novalis, Brecht), Literatures in English (Allen Ginsberg, Edgar Poe); Literatures of the World (Rousseau/Kant/Sade, Supermarket Checkout Reading), and Cultural Studies (Bob Dylan).

It is with great sadness that I report that our colleague, William (Billy) Arctander O’Brien, Professor Emeritus, passed away on August 19, 2026.

As many of you know, Billy was born and raised in the Bronx. After earning his undergraduate degree at Cornell University and his PhD from Johns Hopkins, Billy taught for several years at the University of Virginia before coming to the Literature Department at UC San Diego in 1986. Billy’s primary research was German Romanticism, but, in keeping with the spirit of the department, his interests extended beyond national and disciplinary boundaries. His book, Novalis: Signs of Revolution (Duke UP, 1995), remains a landmark work of scholarship that transformed the image of the Romantic writer Friedrich von Hardenberg from an ethereal dreamer into a worldly intellectual: philosophically astute, politically radical, poetically visionary.

Billy was a versatile and dedicated teacher in the Literature Department, where he taught courses on figures ranging from Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud to Edgar Allan Poe, Allen Ginsberg, and Bob Dylan. His lectures for the Revelle Humanities and the Making of the Modern World programs were legendary, winning him near-unanimous student accolades and multiple awards. When interviewed about his teaching by The Guardian in 2016, Billy said the following: “Good teaching first of all begins with respect and care for your students. Not just as students, but as people. All the students are people in your class, and your class is a group of people together. We should have a sense of each other as a group.”

Billy was wicked smart, funny, and capable of great kindness. He will be sorely missed.

Sincerely,

Daisuke Miyao
Professor and Hajime Mori Chair in Japanese Language and Literature
Chair, Department of Literature
University of California, San Diego

Publications

• “Friedrich von Hardenberg (Pseudonym: Novalis),” The Oxford Handbook of European Romanticism, ed. Paul Hamilton (Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 212-18.

• "Hardenbergs Verfehlungen, oder Die Grenzen der Romantik." Bergbau und Dichtung. Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis) zum 200. Todestag. Hrsg. V. Eleonore Sent. (Weimar und Jena: Hain, 2004), pp. 229-36.

• "Blüthenstaub: Dekonstruktion der Symbolik," Blüthenstaub--Rezeption und Wirkung des Werkes von Novalis, Hrsg. von Herbert Uerlings. (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2000), pp. 125-39.

• Novalis: Signs of Revolution. Duke University Press, 1995.

• "Herstellung eines Mythos: Novalis' Schriften in der Bearbeitung von Tieck und Schlegel," Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie, 111.2 (1992): 161-80.

• "E.T.A. Hoffmann's Critique of Idealism: Psychology, Allegory, and Philosophy in 'Die Automate,'" Euphorion, 96.4 (1989): 369-406.

• "Getting Blasted: Hölderlin's 'Wie wenn am Feiertage...'," MLN, 94.3 (1979): 569-86.

• Ph.D., Humanities Center, Johns Hopkins University

• B.A., Cornell University