Seminar with Erika Boeckeler

SHAKESPEAREAN STUDIES

SPEAKER: Erika Boeckeler, Northeastern University

Erika Boeckeler’s work spans multiple genres and disciplines: Shakespeare, early modern poetry, History of the Book, early modern art history, early Slavic print culture. Her book, Playful Letters: A Study in Early Modern Alphabetics (University of Iowa Press, 2017), argues that artistic experimentation with the alphabet had a sweeping impact on the intellectual and social history of the early modern period. Her current book project blends her expertise in book history and comparative methodologies with premodern critical race theory. The aim is to reveal how discourses of race (e.g. black inke, faire paper). are embedded in the foundations of European printing and its literary output. Dr. Boeckeler is also the editor of Shakespeare’s poem, “A Louers Complaint,” at Internet Shakespeare Editions, and serves on the editorial board of English Literary Renaissance.