Dr. Fred Ribkoff

BA (Western), MA (SFU), PhD (SFU) - Retired Faculty
Fred Ribkoff
Surrey Office: Fir Building, 318

Bio:

Fred Ribkoff has a Ph.D. in English with a specialization in drama. He teaches in the English (ENGL) and Interdisciplinary Expressive Arts (IDEA) departments at KPU. He teaches a variety of English courses as well as IDEA 1400: Explorations in Expressive Arts through Drama and Theatre and IDEA 3200: Theatre for Social Change.

A writer, actor, adapter, director, and producer of plays, he is the President and Artistic Director of 1001 Steps Theatre Society (https://www.1001steps.org/), an ensemble theatre troupe based in Surrey, B.C. Most recently, Fred adapted Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler—now called Hedda Gabler in SoHo—a play 1001 Steps will be staging at PAL Theatre in Vancouver in October 2020. In 2018, Fred and his colleague Paul Tyndall adapted the opening scene of Shakespeare’s King Lear and in March 2019 1001 Steps performed LEAR INC.: ACT 1, SCENE 1 in the KPU Spruce building atrium. Fred co-directed and played Lear alongside Paul’s Kent. In September 2019, 1001 Steps staged the full-length adaptation—LEAR INC.: ALL OR NOTHING—at The Cultch (Vancouver East Cultural Centre) Historic Theatre. Once again, Fred co-directed and played Lear. In September 2018, 1001 Steps performed his co-authored boxing themed adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, entitled The Training of the Shrew, at the Vancouver Fringe Festival. Fred co-directed and played Baptista. He also co-authored and co-directed Jag and the American, a play based on short stories by Ernest Hemingway, which was staged at The Cultch Culture Lab in August 2016. In addition, he has directed various student productions of classic plays.

Currently, Fred is writing a critical memoir based on his experience adapting, rehearsing, and performing LEAR INC. and preparing for publication the co-authored Training of the Shrew as well as an article on the staging of comic stereotypes in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice.

Courses taught

  • ENGL 1100: Introduction to University Writing
  • ENGL 1202: Reading and Writing about Selected Topics: An Introduction to Literature
  • ENGL 1204: Reading and Writing about Genre: An Introduction to Literature
  • IDEA 1400: Explorations in Expressive Arts through Drama and Theatre
  • ENGL 2309: Literature of the United States
  • ENGL 2330: Studies in Drama
  • IDEA 3200: Theatre for Social Change
  • ENGL 3317: History of Ideas
  • ENGL 3320: Studies in Shakespeare
  • ENGL 3328: Romantic Poetry and Poetics
  • ENGL 3345: Diasporic Literatures
  • ENGL 3355: Modern and Contemporary Drama
  • ENGL 3370: Life Writing
  • English 4409: Topics in Literature of the United States

Areas of Interest

  • Collaborating with others in bringing dramatic texts to life in the classroom or in any space possible
  • Exploring how traumatic experience, post-traumatic memory, mourning, and the taboo shape both tragic and comic dramatizations of human experience
  • Examining literary and cinematic representations of the Holocaust and survivor testimony
  • Engaging students in writing and performance activities which foster empathy, critical thought and creative expression

Scholarly Work

  • Links to Scholarly and Performance Work Online
  • Unheeded Post-Traumatic Unpredictability: Philip G. Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment as Absurdist Performance
  • Post-Traumatic Parataxis and the Search for a “Survivor by Proxy” in Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
  • Voices of the Oppressed and Oppressors First, History and Theory Last
  • Resonating Atrocities: Tennessee Williams’ Not About Nightingales, Suddenly Last Summer, and the Holocaust
  • 1001 Steps
  • ESSAYS IN JOURNALS
  • Ribkoff, F., Mirfakhraie, A. (2015). First Voices First, History and Theory Last: Education as a Means of Witnessing Various Forms of Oppression. In College Quarterly, 18, 3.
  • Tyndall, P., Ribkoff, F. (2014). Loss, Longing, and the Optative Mode in Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping: On the Spiritual Value of Ruth’s Wondering Narrative. In Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature, LXVI, 2.
  • Ribkoff, F. (2013). Unheeded Post-Traumatic Unpredictability: Philip G. Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment as Absurdist Performance. In Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies, 9, 1, 2013.
  • Ribkoff, F. (2011). Resonating Atrocities: Tennessee Williams’ Not About Nightingales, Suddenly Last Summer, and the Holocaust. In Journal of American Drama and Theatre, 23, 3.
  • Ribkoff, F., Tyndall, P. (2011). On the Dialectics of Trauma in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. In Journal of Medical Humanities, 32, 4.
  • Ribkoff, F., Inglis, K. (2011). Post-Traumatic Parataxis and the Search for a “Survivor by Proxy” in Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. In PsyArt: An Online Journal for the Psychological Study of the Arts, Jan.
  • Ribkoff, F. (2000). Shame, Guilt, Empathy, and the Search for Identity in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. In Modern Drama, 43,1.
  • Ribkoff, F. (1993). Daphne Marlatt’s “Rings”: An Extension of the Proprioceptive. In Essays on Canadian Writing, 50.
  • ESSAYS IN BOOKS
  • Ribkoff, F., Tyndall, P. (2018). Authority, Instrumental Reason and the Fault Lines of Modern Civilization in Peter Brook's Cinematic Rendering of Shakespeare's King Lear. In Shakespeare and Authority: Citations, Conceptions and Constructions. Eds. Katie Halsey and Angus Vine. Palgrave, Macmillan.
  • Ribkoff, F. (2012). Bharati Mukherjee’s “The Management of Grief” and the Politics of Mourning in the Aftermath of the Air India Bombing. In Literature For Our Times: Postcolonial Studies in the Twenty-First Century. Eds. Bill Ashcroft, Ranjini Mendis, Julie McGonegal, and Arun Mukherjee. Rodopi.
  • Ribkoff, F. (2010). Shame, Guilt, Empathy, and the Search for Identity in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. In Critical Insights: Death of a Salesman. Ed. Brenda Murphy. Salem.
  • Ribkoff, F. (2008). Shame, Guilt, Empathy, and the Search for Identity in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. In Contemporary Literary Criticism, 179. Gale.
  • Ribkoff, F. (2007). Shame, Guilt, Empathy, and the Search for Identity in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. In Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations: Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, Updated Edition. Ed. Harold Bloom. Chelsea House.
  • Ribkoff, F. (2005). Shame, Guilt, Empathy, and the Search for Identity in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. In Bloom’s Major Literary Characters: Willy Loman. Ed. Harold Bloom. Chelsea House.
  • Ribkoff, F. (2004). Fred Ribkoff on the Functions of Shame and Guilt in the Identity Crises of Willy and Biff. In Bloom’s Guides: Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Ed. Harold Bloom. Chelsea House.