An entry in the Women Medievalists and the Academy collection, this brief biography presents Cambridge historian Mary Bateson, scholar and suffragist, who lived on the cusp of the opportunity for academic professionalization for women. Her life illustrates an inspiring blend of serious scholarship, accessible publication, and devoted political…[Read more]

Traditional equation of women with the feminine and men with the masculine is disrupted when Beowulf is read within the rubric of gender performance as determined by Judith Butler in Gender Trouble and Bodies that Matter. Performativity enables a new way of interpreting the characters of Beowulf; specifically, in the world of the poem masculinity…[Read more]

Throughout the Christian era, literary and artistic representations of the Virgin Mary have been manipulated by a variety of ideologies, religious or political, to define the appropriate positioning and agency of the feminine in a culture. The culture of Anglo-Saxon England, like most others, almost always presented Mary in positive terms,…[Read more]

Like most female characters in Old English poetry, Judith from the Old English poem of the same name has been subject to much scrutiny in recent years. She has been read as a figure of Mother Church, or as a Germanic warrior, or as a warning against rape. Yet Judith’s relationship with her maid, the focus of my analysis of Judith, has been elided;…[Read more]

Feminist and gender scholars working in Anglo-Saxon studies in the past ten years have been asking new and important questions of a variety of Old English and Anglo-Latin texts. Most crucially, this interdisciplinary new work redefines the historiographical paradigms of Anglo-Saxon cultural production and reception so that women must now be…[Read more]

Round Table on Diversity and Teaching Medieval Studies sponsored by Graduate Student Council. Session title: “Tearing Down Walls, Building Bridges:
Medieval Diversity and Cross-Cultural Encounters in Syllabus Design and Teaching.” This paper is about two courses that illustrate the principle “Diversity in Every Course Title” and several…[Read more]

Round Table on Diversity and Teaching Medieval Studies sponsored by Graduate Student Council. Session title: “Tearing Down Walls, Building Bridges:
Medieval Diversity and Cross-Cultural Encounters in Syllabus Design and Teaching.” This paper is about two courses that illustrate the principle “Diversity in Every Course Title” and several…[Read more]

Round Table on Diversity and Teaching Medieval Studies sponsored by Graduate Student Council. Session title: “Tearing Down Walls, Building Bridges:
Medieval Diversity and Cross-Cultural Encounters in Syllabus Design and Teaching.” This paper is about two courses that illustrate the principle “Diversity in Every Course Title” and several…[Read more]

This essay reexamines the mixtures of genres in The Comedy of Errors to argue that Shakespeare’s play encourages reflection on genre as a mode of representation. In particular, the genres of romance and farce each offer specific approaches to subjectivity, which would have been especially meaningful to early modern urban playgoers grappling with…[Read more]

Shakespearean tragedies and comedies have been adapted to the silver screen in India, Malaysia, Tibet, Hong Kong, Singapore, China, and Japan. How do Shakespeare and modern directors talk to each other across cultural and historical divides? Why are particular strategies used or themes emphasized? How are pre-linguistic structures of spectacle and…[Read more]

Abstract
After 1588, several socio-political and economic problems appeared in the Elizabethan society. These problems were
aggravated by Elizabeth I’s desire to live royally without responsibility. The correlation between good government and the
responsibility of monarchs was emphasised in the literature of the period, as well. Particularly, t…[Read more]

Shakespeare in Animation

One of the most familiar literary topics is the seduction scene. Both Shakespeare and Milton enhance this tradition by shifting the motives offered by the seducer to ones fitting increasingly autonomous and ambitious women, foreshadowing many of the concerns of modern feminism.