Kevin Curran
PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH, UNIVERSITY OF LAUSANNE
PRESIDENT, L'ATELIER SHAKESPEARE
KDCURRAN@GMAIL.COM
SHAKESPEARE * RENAISSANCE * THEATRE * LAW
Welcome
I'm Professor of English Literature at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. I have taught and published widely on Shakespeare and English Renaissance drama. My broad professional aim to is build bridges between scholarship, teaching, and the public life of the arts. Explore these pages to learn more about my work.
ABOUT
I'm Professor of English Literature and a member of the Centre d'Études Théâtrales at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. Previously, I held posts as Assistant Professor and Associate Professor at the University of North Texas, USA; Tomlinson Postdoctoral Research Fellow at McGill University in Montreal, Canada; and Carnahan Postdoctoral Fellow at Washington and Jefferson College in Pennsylvania, USA. I completed my BA, MA, and PhD at University College Dublin, Ireland.
My research and teaching focus on Shakespeare and English Renaissance Drama, which I’ve lectured on in eleven countries. I have secondary interests in modern and contemporary performance. Most of my published scholarship deals in one way or another with the intersection between the history of ideas and the material conditions of theatre. This includes a number of books, both sole-authored and edited, such as Marriage, Performance, and Politics at the Jacobean Court (Ashgate, 2009); Shakespeare’s Legal Ecologies: Law and Distributed Selfhood (Northwestern University Press, 2017); Qu’est-ce qu’un personnage ? (EPFL Press, 2023), co-authored with Vincent Laughery, Andy Reilly, and Josefa Terribilini; Shakespeare and Judgment (Edinburgh University Press, 2017); and Renaissance Personhood: Materiality, Taxonomy, Process (Edinburgh University Press, 2020); as well as a special issue of the journal Criticism on “Shakespeare and Phenomenology” (2012), co-edited with James Kearney. My most recent book is, Shakespeare's Theater of Judgment: Six Keywords (Edinburgh University Press, 2024). I am currently writing a book about Hamlet.
I am also the editor of two book series: “Edinburgh Critical Studies in Shakespeare and Philosophy” (in English, published by Edinburgh University Press) and "Questions de Théâtre" (in French, published by EPFL Press).
My research and writing have been supported over the years by a variety of institutions and organizations. I have been awarded fellowships from the Folger Shakespeare Library (Washington DC), the Huntington Library (San Marino, California), the Bibliographical Society of America, and the Harry Ransom Research Center (Austin, Texas). In 2017, I was named Distinguished International Visiting Fellow at the Center for the History of Emotions in Perth and Sydney, Australia. And in 2021, I was awarded a major grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation in support of a 4-year project called "Theater and Judgment in Early Modern England,"which included a team of local and international collaborators.
In addition to my academic work, I have a strong commitment to the arts and to creative entrepreneurship. In 2022, I launched a performance collective called L'Atelier Shakespeare for which I currently serve as president. The mission of L'Atelier Shakespeare is to ensure the presence of Shakespearean performance (interpreted broadly to include a wide variety of theatrical forms in multiple languages) at the university, in the city, and beyond. We create our own performances and also sponsor the work of other artists and companies. My undergraduate course, “The Shakespeare Workshop,” provides an academic counterpart to L’Atelier Shakespeare which invites students to experiment with bridging the gap between critical and creative modes of interaction with plays. Prior to my work with L'Atelier Shakespeare, I served for seven years as president of the Lausanne Shakespeare Festival, which I founded in 2015.
Beyond the university, I serve on the Representative Council of the Center for Renaissance Studies at the Newberry Library in Chicago and am a member of the International Shakespeare Conference in Stratford-upon-Avon. I was president of the Swiss Association for Medieval and Early Modern English Studies from 2021 to 2024 and a member of the Renaissance Society of America Council from 2009 to 2024. Between 2017 and 2019, I was president of the Modern Language Association's Law and Humanities Forum, and between 2019 and 2023, I coordinated a Shakespeare Summer School in Venice, Italy, called "Global Shakespeares."
RESEARCH
You can access copies of some of the material below here.
BOOKS & ESSAY COLLECTIONS
Shakespeare's Theater of Judgment: Six Keywords (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2024)
with Vincent Laughery, Andy Reilly, and Josefa Terribilini, Qu’est-ce qu’un personnage ? (Lausanne: EPFL Press, 2023)
Shakespeare’s Legal Ecologies: Law and Distributed Selfhood (Evanston IL: Northwestern University Press, 2017) hc and pbk
Marriage, Performance, and Politics at the Jacobean Court (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009) pbk 2016
(ed.) Renaissance Personhood: Materiality, Taxonomy, Process (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020) pbk 2021
Contributors: John Archer, Amanda Bailey, Joseph Campana, Kevin Curran, Holly Dugan, Stephanie Elsky, David B. Goldstein, Colby Gordon, Wendy Beth Hyman, Greg Kneidel.
(ed.) Shakespeare and Judgment (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017) pbk 2018
Contributors: Richard Strier, Paul Yachnin, Virginia Lee Strain, Vivasvan Soni, Constance Jordan, Katherine B. Attié, Carolyn Sale, Kevin Curran, John Parker, Sanford Budick
(ed. with James Kearney) Criticism 54.3 (2012), Special Issue on “Shakespeare and Phenomenology.”
Contributors: Bruce R. Smith, Julia R. Lupton, Kevin Curran, James Kearney, Michael Witmore, Ken Jackson, Paul Kottman, James Knapp, Jennifer Bates, Jennifer Waldron
ARTICLES & BOOK CHAPTERS
"Performance Pedagogy: Theatrical Judgment and Global Citizenship." Public Humanities 1 (2025): 1-8.
"Everyday Dramaturgy: Virtue and the Craft of Living," in Shakespeare's Virtuous Theater, ed. Julia Reinhard Lupton, Kent Lehnhof, and Carolyn Sale (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2023)
"The Four Cardinal Virtues: Caesar's Mantle and Practical Wisdom," in Shakespeare and Virtue: A Handbook, ed. Julia Reinhard Lupton and Donovan Sherman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022)
“Judgment,” in Entertaining the Idea: Shakespeare, Philosophy, and Performance, ed. Lowell Gallagher, James Kearney, and Julia Reinhard Lupton (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021)
“Masques dans le Théâtre de Shakespeare,” in Masques et Théâtre: Créations de Werner Strub et Éditions Rare de la Fondation Bodmer, ed. Jacques Berchtold et Anne-Catherine Sutermeister (Geneva: Éditions Noir sur Blanc, 2020)
“The Face of Judgment in Measure for Measure,” in Face to Face in Shakespearean Drama, ed. Julia Reinhard Lupton and Matthew Smith (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019)
“Shakespeare's Comedies and the Senses,” in The Oxford Handbook of Shakespearean Comedy, ed. Heather Hirschfeld (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018)
“Shakespeare and Selfhood,” in The Routledge Companion to Shakespeare and Philosophy, ed. Craig Bourne and Emily Caddick Bourne (London: Routledge, 2018)
“Recent Studies in Tudor and Stuart Drama,” Studies in English Literature 57 (2017): 427-74.
“Introduction,” in Shakespeare and Judgment, ed. Kevin Curran (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016), 1-18.
“Prospero’s Plea: Judgment, Invention, and Political Form in The Tempest,” in Shakespeare and Judgment, ed. Kevin Curran (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016), 157-71.
“Hospitable Justice: Law and Selfhood in Shakespeare’s Sonnets,” Law, Culture, and the Humanities 9 (2013): 295-310. [Honorable Mention: The Penny Pether Award for Law and Language Scholarship]
“Introduction” (co-written with James Kearney). Criticism 54.3 (2012): 353-64, Special Issue on “Shakespeare and Phenomenology,” ed. Kevin Curran and James Kearney.
“Feeling Criminal in Macbeth,” Criticism 54.3 (2012): 391-401, Special Issue on “Shakespeare and Phenomenology,” ed. Kevin Curran and James Kearney.
“Treasonous Silence: The Tragedy of Philotas and Legal Epistemology,” English Literary Renaissance 42 (2012): 58-89. [Winner: 2013 Martin Stevens Award for Best Essay in Early Drama]
“Renaissance Non-Humanism,” Renaissance Studies 24 (2010): 314-22.
“Shakespeare and Daniel Revisited: Antony and Cleopatra 2.5.50-4 and The Tragedy of Philotas 5.2.2013-15,” Notes & Queries 54 (2007): 1-3.
“Erotic Policy: King James, Thomas Campion, and the Rhetoric of Anglo-Scottish Marriage,” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 7 (2007): 55-77.
“James I and Fictional Authority at the Palatine Wedding Celebrations,” Renaissance Studies 20 (2006): 51-67.
“Virtual Scholarship: Navigating Early Modern Studies on the World Wide Web,” Early Modern Literary Studies 12 (2006): 1-23.
TEACHING
Here are descriptions of some courses I’ve taught recently.
UNDERGRADUATE
The Shakespeare Workshop
“The Shakespeare Workshop” explores a selection of Shakespeare’s plays from the perspective of performance. We take the class title seriously: it is a workshop more than a traditional academic course, which means we will meet in a theatre space rather than a classroom, and students will be expected to take a participatory, hands-on approach to the texts we study. A willingness to actively take part in discussion and get up on your feet is essential. In addition to considering how each of our plays was staged in its own time and in subsequent eras, the majority of our energy will be invested in exploring how each play might be adapted for performance now. Towards this end, our work will involve careful analysis of language, character, and dramatic design, as well as key thematic and conceptual preoccupations. We will also learn about what is possible in a modern theatrical space and even what counts as a “theatrical space.” Finally, in order to maintain a shared sense of intellectual and artistic mission, our work throughout the semester will be framed by a broad question of topical importance: “What makes community possible?” We will return regularly to a consideration of (1) how our plays explore this question, and (2) how the question itself might invite innovative approaches to performance and staging.
English Renaissance Drama
This discussion-based course provides students with a rigorous introduction to the most vibrant period in the history of English theatre. We focus on a generically and stylistically eclectic group of plays written between the 1580s and the 1630s by Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Kyd, William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, John Fletcher, and Philip Massinger. Although the course aims to impart a broad knowledge of English Renaissance Drama, three crucial aspects of the form will anchor our conversations throughout the semester: (1) The material conditions of performance. How did the space of the stage and particular acting techniques shape the meaning of plays in the theatre? (2) The reception of plays by a public. How did early modern people experience and respond to plays both in performance and print? (3) The place of theatre in the political and cultural imagination of Renaissance England. To what extent, and in what particular ways, did the theatre contribute to what we would now call critical thinking?
Shakespeare's Sonnets
The 154 poems published in 1609 under the title, Shake-speares Sonnets Never Before Imprinted are enigmatic from just about every perspective: bibliographical, historical, chronological, literary, philosophical. For scholars of Shakespeare they present, in turn, massive problems of interpretation and overwhelmingly gratifying moments of illumination. At once an index to the issues that preoccupied Shakespeare throughout his career as a playwright and a crucial document in the history of ideas more generally, the Sonnets push us into a uniquely varied assortment of intellectual environments, from the world of Shakespeare’s plays to the world of Renaissance law, medicine, and commerce; from the literary culture of England to the colonial culture of Europe. They ask us to confront questions on topics ranging from gender to temporality to humanness. This course will cover all of this territory, offering students a rigorous and comprehensive introduction to one of Shakespeare’s greatest literary achievements.
London and Dublin Stages, 1890-1910
Around the turn of the twentieth century, something remarkable happened in the world of anglophone European theatre. Intellectuals, artists, and activists in London and Dublin decided that social and cultural change was needed and that drama had a crucial role to play in this process. The shift to a new world order, so the argument ran, required new kinds of plays and new kinds of theatrical institutions to stage them in.
This much everyone could agree on. More contentious was what exactly these new plays and institutions should look like, and what kind of change they should help bring about. Mapping out the debates is no easy task. We certainly can’t divide different points of view neatly between London and Dublin since those at the forefront the new theatrical movements – people like Oscar Wilde, W. B. Yeats, Lady Augusta Gregory, George Bernard Shaw, and J. M. Synge – had incredibly mobile lives and remarkably complex identities. Among this restless and cosmopolitan crew of writers and intellectuals, some would seek inspiration in the Realism of Henrik Ibsen in Norway; others were influenced by aesthetic and institutional models in France and Germany. And all were to some degree or other still tethered to the vernacular performance traditions that they claimed to reject: melodrama, farce, and music hall. When dealing with anglophone European theatre at the turn of the twentieth century, then, one can’t speak of England without speaking of Ireland, and vice-versa; and one can’t speak of either without speaking of continental Europe. This seminar invites students to submerge themselves in this fascinating, complex, international, and often unapologetically ideological period in the history of anglophone theatre.
POSTGRADUATE
Marlowe's Theater
Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) was the most successful and influential English dramatist before Shakespeare. Doubtless the latter would have developed their craft very differently had Marlowe not been there as a standard-setting competitor in the early 1590s. Had Marlowe not died so young – killed in a barroom brawl at the age of twenty-nine – the landscape of English Renaissance drama, Shakespeare’s career included, would probably look much different. Marlowe was among the first professional writers in early modern England and played a major role establishing tragedy as a key genre for popular commercial theater. What’s more, in popularizing “blank verse” (unrhymed metrical lines) he essentially gave English Renaissance drama its voice. Described variously, both in his own time and subsequently, as an atheist, a nonconformist, a sodomite, and an overall sexual and intellectual dissident, Marlowe has an edgy glamour that few writers before or since have equaled. Employed as a government spy for Queen Elizabeth at the same time as he plied his trade as both poet and playwright, his short, eventful, and highly impactful life carries a mysterious allure.
The entirety of Marlowe’s dramatic career unfolds between 1587 and 1593; like the Beatles, he revolutionized an artistic field in six years before the age of thirty, pushing both the formal and thematic boundaries of English commercial drama as it existed then. His plays deal with topics that are as urgent now as they were in the rapidly changing world of sixteenth century England: the global imagination and cosmopolitanism (Tamburlaine and The Jew of Malta); the ethics of individuality and free-will (Tamburlaine and Doctor Faustus); religious and ethnic identity (Tamburlaine, The Jew of Malta, and The Massacre at Paris); and ideas of masculinity, power, and sexual identity (Edward II and Dido, Queen of Carthage). In this discussion-based seminar, we will read all of Marlowe’s plays. Particular attention will be given to how the plays work in performance; the ways in which Marlowe transforms cultural and intellectual concerns of the early modern period into theatre; and the social environments that informed Marlowe’s playwrighting, including Cambridge University, scientific and colonial circles, and the London literary scene. We will also, of course, always be attentive to how the plays continue to speak to issues in our own time.
Shakespeare's Justice
This course explores how justice works in a selection of plays by Shakespeare. Central to our mission will be to go deeper than simply looking at trial scenes and their relationship to legal history. Though we certainly won’t leave Shakespeare’s famous trial scenes out, we are also going to discover that “justice,” though it takes a particular procedural form in the institutional context of the courtroom, is not a purely legal principle. It is also, and more broadly, an ethical and organizational concept. At its most basic level, “justice” denotes a system of maintaining equilibrium and proper correspondences between the different parts that form a whole of some sort. Indeed, justice was taught in Renaissance schools as part of the “science” of living a good and successful life (i.e. virtue) and as a compositional precept for writing speeches, literary texts, and plays that had plots, characters, and language that were properly suited to each other in order to form a harmonious whole (i.e. rhetoric).
Justice in a legal sense, therefore, is part of a larger history of ideas, which includes the history of literary and dramatic form itself. Accordingly, plays represent justice in trial scenes, but also whenever they portray people in communities trying to work things out, set things right, and solve problems. Even beyond representation, plays are also, in formal terms, incarnations of justice. That is, they curate carefully chosen characters with specific kinds of language within the parameters of certain sorts of plots in order to make a creative product that is internally coherent; that is to say, juste.
The goal of “Shakespeare’s Justice,” then, is to use theater to help students understand two things: (1) the way legal judgment is part of a much larger intellectual history of ethics and aesthetics; and (2) the way justice is not simply something that is rendered punctually, but rather an ongoing process of coordinating, balancing, compensating, and fixing. Shakespeare’s plays remind us that, in a certain sense, we are all jurists in the theatre of life, doing our best to live in an orderly and balanced fashion.
The Legal Imagination: Renaissance Texts/Contemporary Questions
That law was a literary and political obsession in the English Renaissance is, perhaps, not terribly surprising. After all, legal concepts such as judgment, citizenship, personhood, punishment, and forgiveness lie at the very heart of how human collectives understand themselves socially and morally, and in the Renaissance period these modes of self-identification were being drastically reshaped by religious conflicts, colonial encounters, and new philosophical ideas about the nature of life. For writers like Thomas More, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, and Thomas Hobbes, law emerges as much more than a collection of rules and regulations or a loose conglomerate of institutions. Instead, law for these writers represents a potent imaginative resource for confronting some of the most vexing questions of their day. With this in mind, our job in this course will be to pursue three goals. First, we will try to establish some of the unique literary characteristics of each writer’s engagement with legal concepts. Second, we will explore the historical underpinnings of the emergence of a uniquely Renaissance legal imagination. Third, we will consider how Renaissance literature helps us think through present-day debates about the nature of justice.
INITIATIVES & CREATIVE WORK
L'ATELIER SHAKESPEARE
L’Atelier Shakespeare is a theatre group and arts collective that I founded in 2022. The mission of L’Atelier Shakespeare is to foster the creation of Shakespearean performances on the university campus, in the city of Lausanne, and throughout the Suisse Romande. We work in both French and English and we take the terms “Shakespearean” and “performance” in their broadest possible senses to include a wide range of media and theatrical forms. L’Atelier Shakespeare encourages experimentation and adaptation, and it welcomes collaborators with a variety of creative interests, from acting and directing to music, dance, translation, sound, and design. L’Atelier Shakespeare has an academic counterpart in my undergraduate course, “The Shakespeare Workshop,” in which students design and perform short theatrical adaptations as part of a semester-long exploration of the links between creative and critical thinking.
Learn more about L'Atelier Shakespeare on OUR WEBSITE, and check us out on INSTAGRAM too.
LAUSANNE SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL
In 2015, I launched the Lausanne Shakespeare Festival in collaboration with theatre director Florence Rivero. It ran for seven years, from 2015 to 2022. The LSF was Switzerland’s only annual theatrical event devoted exclusively to the work of Shakespeare. Combining full-length plays with workshops, music, street theater, and a range of performance experiments during the day, the LSF was committed to inclusivity and aesthetic pluralism. The LSF was also fundamentally cosmopolitan, bringing together artists and audiences from a variety of linguistic backgrounds and featuring events in French and English, and sometimes German and Italian. At the heart of the LSF was a simple idea: take some of the greatest plays ever written and use them to build bridges between things that tend to stay apart: the university and the city, specialists and the public, critical thinking and creativity, and art and education. By prioritizing the talents of Lausanne’s newest generation of professional actors and directors, the LSF contributed to building a strong future for theater in the city, the region, and the country.
Learn more about the Lausanne Shakespeare Festival on OUR WEBSITE, and check us out on FACEBOOK and INSTAGRAM too.
EDINBURGH CRITICAL STUDIES IN SHAKESPEARE AND PHILOSOPHY
Series Editor: Kevin Curran
Editorial Board: Ewan Fernie, James Kearney, Julia Reinhard Lupton, Madhavi Menon, Simon Palfry, Tiffany Stern, Henry S. Turner, Michael Witmore, Paul Yachnin
In 2012, I assembled an editorial board and launched the book series “Edinburgh Critical Studies in Shakespeare and Philosophy,” published by Edinburgh University Press. The first title was published in 2014. “Edinburgh Critical Studies in Shakespeare and Philosophy” takes seriously the speculative and world-making properties of Shakespeare’s art. Maintaining a broad view of “philosophy” that accommodates foundartional questions of metaphysics, ethics, politics, and aesthetics, the series also expands our understanding of philosophy to include the unique kinds of theoretical work carried out by performance and poetry itself. These scholarly monographs will reinvigorate Shakespeare studies by opening new interdisciplinary conversations among scholars, artists, and students. For more information, view the PRESS PAGE.
BOOKS PUBLISHED
Michael D. Wagner, The Play and the Thing: A Phenomenology of Shakespearean Theatre (2026)
Nathan Pensky, Cartesian Theaters, Shakespearean Minds: Finding Descartes on the Early Modern Stage (2026)
Kevin Curran, Shakespeare's Theater of Judgment: Six Keywords (2024)
Roberta Kwan, Shakespeare, the Reformation, and the Interpreting Self (2023)
Johannes Ungelenk, Touching at a Distance: Shakespeare's Theatre (2023)
Sophie Battell, On the Threshold: Hospitality in Shakespeare’s Drama (2023)
Sanford Budick, Hazarding All: Shakespeare and the Drama of Consciousness (2021)
James A. Knapp, Immateriality and Early Modern English Literature: Shakespeare, Donne, Herbert (2020)
Gillian Knoll, Conceiving Desire in Lyly and Shakespeare: Metaphor, Cognition, Eros (2020)
Chiara Alfano, Derrida Reads Shakespeare (2020)
David Hershinow, Shakespeare the Truth-Teller: Confronting the Cynic Ideal (2019)
Christopher Crosbie, Revenge Tragedy and Classical Philosophy on the Early Modern Stage (2018)
Patrick Gray, Shakespeare and the Fall of the Roman Republic: Selfhood, Stoicism, and Civil War (2018)
Neema Parvini, Shakespeare’s Moral Compass (2018)
J. F. Bernard, Shakespearean Melancholy: Philosophy, Form, and the Transformation of Comedy (2018)
Sara Coodin, Is Shylock Jewish?: Citing Scripture and the Moral Agency of Shakespeare’s Jews (2017)
Katherine Gillen, Chaste Value: Economic Crisis, Female Chastity, and the Production of Social Difference on Shakespeare’s Stage (2017)
Thomas Anderson, Shakespeare’s Fugitive Politics (2016)
Donovan Sherman, Second Death: Theatricalities of the Soul in Shakespeare (2016)
Amir Khan, Countertfactual Shakespeare: Imagining Alternatives in the Tragedies (2015)
Alex Schulman, Rethinking Shakespeare’s Political Philosophy: from Lear to Leviathan (2014)
QUESTIONS DE THÉÂTRE
Comité editorial: Kevin Curran (director), Lise Michel, Josefa Terribilini
Between 2021 and 2022, I worked with the Centre d'Etudes Théâtrales at the University of Lausanne and Epistémé (EPFL Press) to develop a book series, published in French, called "Questions de théâtre." The series features short, engaging books for a broad readership that deal with large, transhistorical questions about theatre: What is a character? What is improvisation? What is a spectator? and so on. You can learn more on our WEBSITE (in French).
BOOKS PUBLISHED
Izabella Pluta et Simon Hagemann, Quel rôles pour le spectateur à l’ère numérique? (2024)
Kevin Curran, Vincent Laughery, Andrew Reilly et Josefa Terribilini, Qu’est-ce qu’un personnage? (2023)
CREATIVE WORK
My creative work centers on the performing arts and includes writing, acting, and especially music. With Andy Reilly, I am one half of the experimental music ensemble Exit Ghost, and my solo compositions have been used in theatre and film. The links below will bring you to a variety of projects and sound portfolios. The image gallery shows some of the events I have been involved with in action. I welcome inquiries about collaborations (in English or French) here.
TALKS / EVENTS / MEDIA
PANELS ORGANIZED
"Theater, Judgment, Form: Three Case Studies." Panel with Patrick Durdel (Unil), Céline Magada (Unil), Stephanie Elsky (Rhodes), and me. Renaissance Society of America, Chicago, IL, USA. 21-23 March, 2024.
“Renaissance Prehistories of Taste 1: Taste as Instruction,” “Renaissance Prehistories of Taste 2: Taste as Distinction,” “Renaissance Prehistories of Taste 3: Taste as Community,” and “Renaissance Prehistories of Taste 4: Taste as Encounter.” Four linked panels co-organized with David Goldstein (York). Renaissance Society of America. Dublin, Ireland. 30 March–2 April 2022.
“Legal Ecologies.” Routable co-organized with Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (GWU) featuring Ron Broglio (ASU), Christina Gerhardt (U Hawaii), Sophi Christman Lavin (SUNY Buffalo), Rob Nixon (Princeton), Cary Wolfe (Rice), and me. Modern Language Association. New York, NY, USA. 4-7 January, 2018.
“Object Lessons in Personhood.” Roundtable with Stephanie Elsky (Wisconsin), Sarah Winter (UConn), Daniel Williams (Harvard), Lucy Sheehan (Texas A&M-Corpus Christi), Christine Holbo (ASU), Jill Staufer (Haverford C), and Stefanie Mueller (Goethe Universität Frankfurt). Modern Language Association. Philadelphia, PA, USA. 5-8 January, 2017.
“Shakespearean Cosmopolitanism: Hospitality, Cynicism, Indifference.” Panel with James Kearney (UCSB), Madhavi Menon (Ashoka), and Jonathan Gil Harris (Ashoka), and me. Renaissance Society of America. Boston, MA, USA. 31 March-2 April, 2016.
“Shakespeare and Judgment.” Panel with Paul Yachnin (McGill), Stephanie Elsky (Wisconsin), Virginia Lee Strain (Loyola Chicago), Jennifer Waldron (Pittsburgh), and me. Renaissance Society of America. Berlin, Germany. 26-28 March, 2015.
“Shakespeare and Law: New Keywords.” Special Session with Luke Wilson (Ohio State), Carolyn Sale (Alberta), and Julia R. Lupton (UC Irvine), and me. Modern Language Association of America. Vancouver, BC, Canada. 8-11 January, 2015.
“Shakespeare and Selfhood: New Keywords.” Special Session with Julian Yates (Delaware), Jennifer Waldron (Pittsburgh), and Laurie Shannon (Northwestern), and me. Modern Language Association of America. Boston, MA, USA. 3-6 January, 2013.
“Shakespeare and Phenomenology.” Roundtable co-organized with James Kearney (UCSB) featuring James Kearney, Julia R. Lupton (UC Irvine), Bruce R. Smith (USC), Ken Jackson (Wayne State), James Knapp (Loyola Chicago), Michael Witmore (The Folger), and me. Modern Language Association of America. Los Angeles, CA, USA. 6-9 January, 2011.
“Shakespeare as Theory.” Special Session with Madhavi Menon (Ashoka), Henry S. Turner (Rutgers), and Michael Witmore (The Folger), and me. Modern Language Association of America. Philadelphia, PA, USA. 27-30 December 2009.
“Shakespeare and Legal Theology.” Panel with Ken Jackson (Wayne State), Heather Hirschfeld (U Tennessee), and me. Renaissance Society of America. Los Angeles, CA, USA. 19-21 March 2009.
“Court Performance and Print in Renaissance England.” Panel with David Bevington (Chicago), David Lindley (Leeds), Jennifer Nevile (University of New South Wales), and me. Renaissance Society of America. Chicago, IL, USA. 3-5 April, 2008.
SEMINARS ORGANIZED AND DIRECTED
“Object Lessons in Renaissance Personhood.” Seminar directed by Kevin Curran. Shakespeare Association of America. Los Angeles, CA, USA. 28-31 March, 2018.
“Theater and Judgment in Early Modern England.” Seminar directed by Kevin Curran. Shakespeare Association of America. St. Louis, MO, USA. 10-12 April, 2014.
“Shakespeare and the Court.” Seminar co-directed by Kevin Curran and Richard Dutton (Ohio State University). Shakespeare Association of America. Dallas, TX, USA. 13-15 March, 2008.
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
“Theatrical virtue: Or, How to Teach Justice with Things.” Société Français Shakespeare. Paris, France. 11-13 March, 2021.
“What is a Legal Ecology?” Modern Language Association. New York, NY, USA. 4-7 January, 2018.
“Cosmopolitan Hospitality in The Merchant of Venice.” Renaissance Society of America, Boston, MA, USA. 31 March-2 April, 2016.
“Shakespeare and the Ethics of Judgment.” Renaissance Society of America. Berlin, Germany. 26-28 March, 2015.
“Hospitality.” Modern Language Association of America. Vancouver, BC, Canada. 8-11 January, 2015.
“Land Law and Selfhood in Richard II.” Renaissance Society of America. New York, NY, USA. 27-29 March, 2014.
“Exteriority.” Modern Language Association of America. Boston, MA, USA. 3-6 January, 2013.
“Hospitable Justice in Shakespeare’s Sonnets.” Modern Language Association of America. Seattle, WA, USA. 5-8 January 2012.
“Phenomenology and Law.” Modern Language Association of America. Los Angeles, CA, USA. 6-9 January 2011.
“Shakespeare and the Phenomenology of Crime.” Modern Language Association of America. Philadelphia, PA, USA. 27-30 December 2009.
“Macbeth and mens rea.” Renaissance Society of America. Los Angeles, CA, USA. 19-21 March 2009.
“Masques, Print, and Thing Theory.” Renaissance Society of America. Chicago, IL, USA. 3-5 April 2008.
“Samuel Daniel, Henry Cuffe, and a Question of Law.” Renaissance Society of America. Miami, FL, USA. 22-24 March 2007.
“Nuptial Performance in the Jacobean Court: Religious Rhetoric and Panegyrical Practice.” Elizabethan Theatre: Religion and Theatre. University of Waterloo, Canada. 16-18 June 2005.
“James I and Fictional Authority at the Palatine Wedding Celebrations.” James VI and I: Quatercentenary Perspectives. Early Modern Research Centre at the University of Reading, UK. 9-11 July 2003.
“Body Politic(s): The Eroticization of National Rhetoric in the Anglo-Scottish Marriage Masque.” Renaissance Rhetoric, Gender, and Politics. University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK. 24-25 April 2003.
“‘Dumbe Messengers’: Elite Leisure and the Politics of Interpretation in Samuel Daniel’s Hymen’s Triumph (1614).” Renaissance Leisure. University College Dublin, Ireland. 26-27 April 2003.
“‘Loose and Wingèd Fictions’: Spatial Strategies and Feminine Geography in Ben Jonson’s The Masque of Blackness (1605).” Text and Image: England 1500–1750. Early Modern Research Centre at the University of Reading, UK. 10-12 July 2002.
“Ben Jonson’s Hymenaei: Union, Chastity, and National Identity.” Identity and Cultural Exchange 600-1600: Contact, Travel, and Trade. University of Birmingham, UK. 5-7 April 2002.
INVITED TALKS (ACADEMIC)
"Hamlet and Method: Knowledge before Critical Thinking." Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft. Bochum, Germany. 25 April 2026.
"What Can Shakespeare Teach Us About Selfhood?" University of Zurich. Zurich, Switzerland. 23 May 2025.
"Thinking Hamlet, Feeling Hamlet, Judging Hamlet." Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès. 29 March 2024.
"Shakespeare's Vision." University of Padua. Padua, Italy. 10 May 2023.
"Vision and Judgment in Shakespeare's Theatre." Moore Institute, University of Galway. Galway, Ireland. 20 April 2023.
"Theater and Judgment in Early Modern England."(with Patrick Durdel and Céline Magada.) Université de Genéve. Geneva, Switzerland. 30 November 2022.
"Shakespeare's Counter-Optics." University of Zurich. Zurich, Switzerland. 4 October 2022.
“Caesar’s Mantle: Judgment and Theatrical Virtue.” University of Haifa. Haifa, Israel. 1 December 2020.
"What Was Personhood?" Ghent University. Ghent, Belgium. 24 October 2019.
"Law and Ecology: Theatrical Approaches." Ghent University. Ghent, Belgium. 27 March 2019.
"The Face of Judgment in Measure for Measure." University of Montreal. Montreal, QC, Canada. 26 September 2018.
"The Physics of Judgment on the Renaissance Stage.” Cambridge University. Cambridge, UK. 3 July 2018.
“Hamlet’s Unreasonable Judgments.” Université de Neuchâtel. Neuchâtel, Switzerland. 26 May 2017.
“Prospero's Freedom.” UCLA. Los Angeles, CA, USA. 29 April 2017.
“Hamlet’s Unreasonable Judgments.” University of Sydney. Sydney, Australia. 18 April 2017.
“Hamlet’s Unreasonable Judgments.” University of Western Australia. Perth, Australia. 10 April 2017.
“Shakespeare and Selfhood.” Lancaster University. Lancaster, UK. 5 March 2017.
“The Legal Imagination: Archive, Practice, Concept.” Université de Genéve, Switzerland. 21 September 2016.
“Prospero's Plea: Judgment, Invention, Responsibility.” Freie Universität Berlin. Berlin, Germany. 28 May 2016.
“Shakespeare and the Criminal Edge.” University of Texas at Arlington. Arlington, TX, USA. 20 February 2009.
“Deciphering Arcadia: Interpretive Encounters in Samuel Daniel’s Pastoral Plays.” Shakespeare and Performance Seminar Series. McGill University, Canada. 5 April 2005.
INVITED TALKS (PUBLIC)
"Le théâtre : un objet controversé ?" Rendez-vous de l'Innovation, University of Lausanne, Switzerland. 5 February 2026.
"La Performance, la pédagogie et la recherche-création." Journée de la Recherche, University of Lausanne, Switzerland. 14 March 2025.
Macbeth Now: Réécriture et Libre Arbitre (Table Ronde/Roundtable). La Grange. Lausanne, Switzerland. 3 May 2023.
Othello et I Am Not What I Am: Discussion et Rencontre avec L'Equipe de Création. Théâtre La Grange de Dorigny. Lausanne, Switzerland. 5 December 2019.
"Living with Literature: A Story in Five Acts." University of Lausanne. Lausanne, Switzerland. 10 December 2018.
“Yeats and the Abbey Theater.” La Grange Theater. Lausanne, Switzerland. 5 October 2015.
“Richard III: The First Modern Criminal.” The Oakridge School Symposium: Celebrating Richard III. Arlington, TX, USA. 21 March 2014.
“Shakespeare’s Sonnets.” Denton Bach Society’s “Music, Poetry, and Dance in Shakespeare’s Time.” Denton, TX, USA. 12 May 2013.
“Killer Shakespeare.” Literary Salon. WordSpace Gallery. Dallas, TX, USA. 1 November 2012.
SAA AND ISA SEMINAR PARTICIPATION
"The Commons of Personhood." Shakespeare Association of America. Seminar: "Law, Literature, and Constitutional Authority." Directors: Stephanie Elsky and Rayna Kalas. Washington DC, USA. 17-19 April, 2019.
Invited Respondent. Shakespeare Association of America. Seminar: “The Face-to-Face in Shakespearean Drama.” Director: Matthew Smith. New Orleans, LA, USA. 23-26 March, 2016.
Invited Respondent. “Sacrifice and Cosmopolitanism in The Merchant of Venice.” Shakespeare Association of America. Seminar: “Shakespeare and Hospitality.” Directors: Julia Reinhard Lupton and David Goldstein. Toronto, ON, Canada. 28-30 March, 2013.
“Shakespeare’s Legal Ecologies.” Shakespeare Association of America. Seminar: “The Nonhuman Renaissance.” Directors: Laurie Shannon and Andrea Hoefelle. Boston, MA, USA. 5-8 April, 2012.
“Hospitable Law in Shakespeare’s Sonnets.” International Shakespeare Association. Seminar: “Shakespeare’s Sonnets.” Directors: Dympna Callaghan and Bob White. Prague, Czech Republic. 17-22 July, 2011.
“Shakespeare’s Sonnets and the Soul of Law.” Shakespeare Association of America. Seminar: “Shakespeare’s Sonnets in Context.” Director: Dympna Callaghan. Chicago, IL, USA. 1-3 April, 2010.
“Shakespearean Criminality.” Shakespeare Association of America. Seminar: “Theatrical Law.” Director: Barbara Kreps. Washington, DC, USA. 9-11 April, 2009.
“Performing Union in the Jacobean Court.” Shakespeare Association of America. Seminar: “Drama and the Making of National Identity in Early Modern England.” Director: Lloyd Edward Kermode. San Diego, CA, USA. 5-7 April 2007.
“Treasonous Silence: Samuel Daniel’s Philotas and the Trial of Henry Cuffe.” Shakespeare Association of America. Seminar: “Staging Justice in Early Modern England.” Director: David Kay. Philadelphia, PA, USA. 13-15 April 2006.
MEDIA APPEARANCES
"Qu'est-ce qu'un personnage ?" LabelLettres (vidéo/interview). 10 June 2024. [Link]
“Le Jugement, Un Art Popularisé au Théâtre.” Uniscope. 22 September 2021. [Link]
Le Grand Soir. RTS (Radio Télévision Suisse). 10 May 2021. [Link]
Le Grad Soir, with Bertrand Reich. RTS (Radio Télévision Suisse). 12 April 2021. [Link]
3 Mousquetaires, with Florence Rivero. RedLine Radio. 12 May 2019. [Link]
"Shakespeare, La Magie et Le Crime à Dorigny." Uniscope. June 2016. [Link]