Coppélia Kahn
Professor:
English
Phone: (401) 863-3738
Coppelia_Kahn@brown.edu
Coppélia Kahn is the author of Man's Estate: Masculine Identity in Shakespeare (1981) and Roman Shakespeare: Warriors, Wounds, and Women (1997). She has published articles on Shakespeare's plays and poems, and on gender theory, Freud, Jacobean drama, and questions of race and nation in 20th-century constructions of Shakespeare. Her edition of The Roaring Girl by Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton will be published next year by Oxford University Press, in Gary Taylor's edition of Middleton's complete works.
Biography
She is the author of Man's Estate: Masculine Identity in Shakespeare (1981) and Roman Shakespeare: Warriors, Wounds, and Women (1997). She has published articles on Shakespeare's plays and poems, and on gender theory, Freud, Jacobean drama, and questions of race and nation in 20th century constructions of Shakespeare. She is co-editor of Representing Shakespeare: New Psychoanalytic Essays (1980); Shakespeare's Rough Magic: Essays in Honor of C.L. Barber (1985); Making A Difference: Feminist Literary Criticism (1985); and Changing Subjects: The Making of Feminist Literary Criticism (1993). Her current research concerns the creation of Shakespeare as a cultural icon in the 19th and early 20th centuries in discourses of race and empire.
Interests
My current research concerns the creation of Shakespeare as a cultural icon in the 19th and early 20th centuries in discourses of race and empire.
Degrees
Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley, 1970
Awards
Seven College Conference Scholarship, Barnard College, 1957-61
McEnerney Fellowship, University of California at Berkeley, 1965-66
Honorable Mention, Florence Howe Prize, 1978
Visiting Professor, Department of English, UCLA, 1986-87
Faculty Fellow, Center for the Humanities, Wesleyan University, fall 1980
Fellowship, Center for the Humanities, Oregon State University, January-June 1993
Visiting Professor, University of Torino, March 1996
Noted Visiting Professor, University of British Columbia, July-August 1997
Fletcher Jones Foundation Distinguished Fellow in the Humanities, Huntington Library, Pasadena, CA, awarded for 1997-98, deferred to 1998-99
Director, Folger Shakespeare Institute seminar, "The Making of Shakespeare(s)," January-April 2004
Shakespeare's Birthday Lecture, Folger Shakespeare Library, April 26, 2004
Affiliations
Modern Language Association
Renaissance Society of America
Shakespeare Association of America
Teaching
Every year, I teach a lecture course in Shakespeare covering the span of his career, and a graduate seminar in Renaissance drama not by Shakespeare. Next year, however, I will teach a graduate seminar in the construction of Shakespeare as a cultural icon, covering four centuries of bardolatry, including the engagement of Shakespeare in the construction of an American national identity. In 2006, I am again teaching "Between Gods and Beasts: the Renaissance Ovid," a course in Ovid's Metamorphoses that I initiated last year. After reading the entire Metamorphoses, we study works by Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton that draw on Ovidian tales, themes, and literary styles. Other regular course offerings include an undergraduate Shakespeare seminar for upperclassmen, and a course in English drama 1300-1700, spanning the medieval, Renaissance, and Restoration periods.
Funded Research
McEnerney Fellowship, University of California at Berkeley, 1965-66
ACLS travel grants, 1981, 1986
Folger Shakespeare Library Fellowship, 1988
UTRA Grant, Brown University, summer 1989
Shakespeare Society of Japan travel grant, 1991
UTRA Grant, Brown University, 1991
Fellowship, Center for the Humanities, Oregon State University, January-June 1993
UTRA Grant, Brown University, 1993
Research Fellowship, Huntington Library, March 1996
Fletcher Jones Foundation Distinguished Fellow in the Humanities, Huntington Library, Pasadena, CA, awarded for 1997-98, deferred to 1998-99
UTRA Grant, Brown University, summer 2000
NEH Summer Stipend for Research ($5000), July-August 2003
Brown University Departmental Research Fund grant ($1500),
May-June 2003
Brown University Dean of the Faculty travel grant ($2,000),
for travel to Shakespeare Society of India meeting, March
2003
Folger Shakespeare Short Term Library Fellowship, January and
May, 2004
Research grant, English Department, $1,000, 2004
Research grant, English Department, $1,000, 2005
Curriculum Vitae
