About
Angelina Del Balzo is Assistant Professor in the Program in Cultures, Civilizations, and Ideas at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey. Her research focuses on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British literature and theater. Education
Ph.D. 2019 University of California, Los Angeles
C.Phil. 2016 English, Gender Studies concentration
M.A. 2015 Dissertation: “Furbish’d Remnants: Theatrical Adaptation and the Orient, 1660-1815”
Committee: Professors Felicity A. Nussbaum (chair), Helen E. Deutsch, Sarah Tindal Kareem, Emily Hodgson Anderson
Certificates: Early Modern Studies; Writing Pedagogy – Writing in the Disciplines
Exam Fields: Seventeenth Century (1590-1688), Eighteenth Century (1688-1820), Queer Literature (1590-1890)
B.A. 2011 Wellesley College
Cum laude, English with honors, Italian Studies
Honors Thesis: “Portraying the ‘Strolling Trade’: Gypsies and Nomadism in the Eighteenth-Century British Novel” (Defoe, Fielding, Austen), dir. by James Noggle Publications
Book Project
“From Foreign Shores: Eighteenth-Century Adaptation and Empire.” In progress.
Journal Publications
“Eighteenth-Century Tragedy and the Formation of Whiteness.” Eighteenth-Century Life. Forthcoming 2024.
“The Archive and the Repertoire of the Treaty of Karlowitz,” for roundtable on Daniel O’Quinn’s Engaging the Ottoman Empire. Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 51 (2022): 245-49.
“‘The Feelings of Others’: Sympathy and Anti-Semitism in Maria Edgeworth’s Harrington.” Eighteenth-Century Fiction 31, no. 4 (2019): 685-704.
“The Sultan’s Tears in Zara, an Oriental Tragedy.” SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 55, no. 3 (2015): 501-21.
In Progress
“Looking for Margaret in Colley Cibber’s Richard III”
Book Chapters
“Shakespeare’s Art of the Dervish: Voltaire, Elizabeth Montagu, and National Sentiment.” In Emotions in Non-Fictional Representations of the Individual, 1600-1850: Between East and West, edited by Malina Stefanovska, Yinghui Wu, and Marie-Paule de Weerdt-Pilorge, 75-91. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021.
Reviews and Entries
Book Review of The Global Indies: British Imperial Culture and the Reshaping of the World, 1756-1815 by Ashley L. Cohen (Yale Univ. Press, 2021). Journal of British Studies. Forthcoming, 2022.
Joint Book Review of Intelligent Souls?: Feminist Orientalism in Eighteenth-Century English Literature by Samara Anne Cahill (Bucknell Univ. Press, 2019) and Novel Cleopatras: Romance Historiography and the Dido Tradition in English Fiction, 1688-1785 by Nicole Horejsi (Univ. of Toronto Press, 2019). Eighteenth-Century Fiction. Forthcoming, 2022.
Joint Performance Review of The Woman Hater by Frances Burney, directed by Everett Quinton, and The Belle’s Stratagem by Hannah Cowley, directed by Gaye Taylor Upchurch, Red Bull Theater. Eighteenth-Century Studies 54, no. 4 (2021): 1005-1007.
Performance Review of Venice Preserved, by Thomas Otway, directed by Prasanna Puwanarajah, Royal Shakespeare Company. Eighteenth-Century Studies 53, no. 2 (2020): 299-301.
Performance Review of Everything That Never Happened, by Sarah B. Mantell, directed by Jessica Kubzansky, Boston Court Pasadena. Shakespeare Bulletin 37, no. 2 (2019): 277-280.
Book Review of In Praise of Fiction: Prefaces to Romances and Novels, 1650-1760 by Baudouin Millet (Peeters, 2017). Eighteenth-Century Fiction 30, no. 4 (2018): 598-601.
Entries on “Falques, Marianne-Agnès, Agenor and Ismena; or, the War of the Tender Passions (1759)” and “Anon., Memoirs of Maria, A Persian Slave (1790),” The Cambridge Guide to the Eighteenth-Century Novel, 1660-1820, ed. April London (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Forthcoming. Projects
Book Project
“From Foreign Shores: Eighteenth-Century Adaptation and Empire.” In progress.
This book argues that eighteenth-century theatrical adaptations set in the “East” introduce Oriental characters as subjects of sympathy while at the same time defamiliarizing the people and space of Britain. Adaptation offered a productive framework for staging difference among Britain’s nascent imperial interests. Eighteenth-century playwrights and performers created a mode for drama that did not hide from audiences the process and labor of performance, but rather emphasized it to create a higher level of engagement with audiences. Within the context of contemporary theories of emotion by Adam Smith and David Hume, this proto-Brechtian alienation presented the actor and the character as distinct objects of sympathy, thereby increasing the emotional potential of performance. In adaptations portraying the Orient, this emotional distance is mapped onto physical distance, and these settings provide a reflexive space for eighteenth-century English texts to explore questions of genre, nation, and feeling as British imperial power expanded, but before European hegemony was a foregone conclusion. Upcoming Talks and Conferences
“Eighteenth-Century Tragedy and the Formation of Whiteness,” Open Digital Seminar in Eighteenth-Century Studies (ODSECS) [online]
https://youtu.be/MHJ2DfhaotwMemberships
American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA)
American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS)
American Society for Theater Research (ASTR)
Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE)
Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas (LMDA)
Modern Language Association (MLA)
