Shakespeare’s MACBETH interrogates the tyranny of absolute monarchical practices and divorces them from naturalized gender constructions by placing Lady Macbeth at the center of the play’s violence. I argue that she provides a parodic inversion of the ideal wife and and puts pressure on masculinist and violent structures of relations that depend…[Read more]

The English Department at U.C. Berkeley has developed two multimedia humanities websites at “Shakespeare’s Staging” and “Milton Revealed,” illustrating classic rewards and problems in digital humanities programs. Users are uniformly positive about the simple, selective, and fully organized structure. Visits are numerous, averaging 200-400 p…[Read more]

The attached syllabus was written for my undergraduate seminar “Renaissance Media” (ENGL 281) taught Spring 2016 at UNC Chapel Hill. The learning objectives for the course were as follows:
“During this course, students will:
* learn the basic history and culture of media technologies in England during the early modern period (roughly 150…[Read more]

Abstract: This article poses a challenge to contemporary historicist tendency to silence significant semantic threads within Hamlet, attempts to restore our critical interest in the age-old problem of delay of the protagonist, and thus distinguish the text in itself from its historicised version. In doing so, my over-all argument proposes an…[Read more]

Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature is the first anthology exploring human cognition and literature in the context of early modern Spanish culture. It includes the leading voices in the field, along with the main themes and directions that this important area of study has been producing. The book begins with an overview of the…[Read more]

What are digital video’s functions? How can those functions be best facilitated in the field of Shakespeare studies when the disciplinary boundary between text and performance is blurred by virtual performative texts? This article surveys the state of global Shakespeare and analyses the implications of digital video in scholarly and pedagogic practice.

At a time when Shakespeare is becoming increasingly globalized and diversified it is urgent more than ever to ask how this appropriated ‘Shakespeare’ constructs ethical value across cultural and other fault lines. Shakespeare and the Ethics of Appropriation is the first book to address the intersection of ethics, aesthetics, authority, and authenticity.

Touring theatre is a place where theatre studies and globalization come into contact. The year of 2012 was a year of global festivities in which Shakespeare’s works played a major part. Through their exemplary power, the intersections of world cultures and Shakespeare provide a set of important issues for repositioning theatre studies in the w…[Read more]

Although “fabulous” animals tend to be thought of as, say, unicorns, for early modern and medieval natural history, as well as the developed attention to gender and reproduction in twenty-first century science, the “fabulous” animal might be the one next door, like, say, squirrels.

Embedded masques or masques within plays exploited an audience desire to witness elite bodies, dress, and behavior in theatrical spaces. They commodified and sold a voyeuristic look at the masque and the masquing hall, access to which was normally restricted to the elite. This essay examines a selection of 17th-century plays that dramatize…[Read more]

The Irish mantle – a type of long, heavy woolen cloak – came under regular attack by writers and lawmakers in Tudor and Stuart England. This article examines how a range of early modern English texts used the Irish mantle to establish and regulate the boundaries of national identity. The Irish were problematically similar to the English; most…[Read more]

In today’s DH environment, where big data and linked data are increasingly the focus of scholars looking for ways to extend their research questions through more expansive and complementary datasets, what is the role of the individual research project? Is its value now truly in integration and association and aggregation with other d…[Read more]

This essay describes and illustrates the activities associated with the University of California at Berkeley’s Shakespeare Program, over the last forty years, covering teaching innovations, numerous research publications, multiple productions and videos of Shakespeare’s plays, and creation of websites, Shakespeare’s Staging and Milton Revealed.