Jennifer Waldron
Jennifer Waldron specializes in the fields of Renaissance drama and post-Reformation religious controversy in England. Her interests include comparative media studies, ritual and performance theory, and histories of gender and the body. Waldronreceived her BA in Comparative Literature (French, Spanish, and English) from Oberlin College, her MA in English Literature from New York University, and her PhD from Princeton University. Her first book, Reformations of the Body: Idolatry, Sacrifice, and Early Modern Theater, reexamines secularization narratives about Elizabethan and Jacobean drama in light of Protestant investments in the sacramental and symbolic powers of the human body. Her current book project, Shakespeare and the Sense of Scale, takes up Shakespeare’s career-long exploration of the power of language to produce effects of scale, from concrete sensory experiences of space and time to complex models of collectivity and individuality. She also co-edited, with Wendy Beth Hyman, a forthcoming special issue of the journal English Literary Renaissance, titled "Theorizing Early Modern Fictions."
Research and Publications
“The Politics of Scale in Shakespeare’s Henry V: Fiction, History, Theater,” forthcoming in “Theorizing Early Modern Fictions,” a special issue of English Literary Renaissance 52.3 (Autumn 2022).
“Then Face to Face: Timing Trust in Macbeth,” in Face to Face in Shakespearean Drama: Ethics, Performance, Philosophy, edited by Matthew Smith and Julia R. Lupton (Edinburgh University Press, 2019).
“Dead Likenesses and Sex Machines: Shakespearean Media Theory,” for A Handbook of Shakespeare, Gender, and Embodiment (Oxford, 2016), edited by Valerie Traub.
Reformations of the Body: Idolatry, Sacrifice, and Early Modern Theater (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
“Shakespeare, Synaesthesia, and Post-Reformation Phenomenology,” Criticism 54.3 (2013): 403–417, in a special issue on “Shakespeare and Phenomenology,” ed. James Kearney and Kevin Curran.
Teaching
Graduate Courses
Early Modern Mass Media: Print, Performance, Publics
Gender and the Body on the Early Modern Stage
Shakespeare and Adaptation
Theory/Technology/Media from Plato to Video Games (co-taught with Dan Morgan)
Word and Image
Undergraduate Courses
Early Modern Literatures in English
Introduction to Critical Reading
Introduction to Shakespeare
Junior Seminar: Word and Image
Junior Seminar: Tragedy
Lectures in Literature
The Renaissance in England
Courses
Graduate Courses
Early Modern Mass Media: Print, Performance, Publics
Gender, Technics, and Media from Plato to Video Games
Gender and the Body on the Early Modern Stage
Word and ImageIntroduction to Literary Studies
Genre and Genre Theory
Shakespeare and Adaptation
Undergraduate Courses
Introduction to Shakespeare
Shakespeare and Social Justice
Shakespeare’s Sexualities
Shakespeare and Film
Senior Seminar: Will & Jane
Projectand Senior Seminars: Word and Image
ProjectSeminar: Tragedy
Service and Other Duties
Director, Literature Program (2018 – 2021)
Director, Program in Medieval and Renaissance Studies (2006–2018)
