Penelope Geng

Associate Professor, English
Shakespeare and Renaissance Drama, British Literature c.1500-1700, Law and Literature, Religion and Literature; Affect and Emotions, Disability Studies, History of Medicine, Race and Property Law

Old Main, 202

she/her/hers

Penelope Geng is associate professor of English specializing in early modern literature, Shakespeare, law and literature, religion, and disability. Her book Communal Justice in Shakespeare’s England: Drama, Law, and Emotion (2021) argues for the vital work of drama in preserving a culture of participatory justice, communal care, and lay magistracy at a time when the law was becoming professionalized.

Her next project, provisionally titled Disabled by Law traces the legacy of seventeenth-century property law on modern notions of able-bodied citizenship—and the surprising ways that ideology was (and continues to be) contested by the literary imagination. She is the co-founder of Uncommon Bodies, a Twin Cities-based research workshop devoted to sharing knowledge about disability theory, aesthetics, and pedagogy. At Macalester, she teaches classes such as “Shakespeare,” “Once upon a Crime” (an introduction to law and literature), “Major British Authors,” “Disability in the English Renaissance,” and “Demonology.”


Areas of Study

  • Shakespeare and Renaissance Drama
  • British Literature c.1500-1700
  • Law and Literature
  • Religion and Literature
  • Affect and Emotions
  • Disability Studies
  • History of Medicine
  • Race and Property Law

Fall 2023 Courses

  • ENGL 115-01 Shakespeare
  • ENGL 394-02 Disability in the English Renaissance
  • ENGL 394-03 Demonologie

Spring 2024 Courses

  • ENGL 294-06 Literature and the Arts of Empire: Early Modern China and England
  • ENGL 294-07 Shakespeare’s History Plays

Book

Communal Justice in Shakespeare’s England: Drama, Law, and Emotion. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021.

Selected Essays and Articles

“Dressing to Transgress: Aesthetic Matching, Historical Costumers of Color, and the Restorying of Institutional Spaces.” Situating Shakespeare Pedagogy in US Higher Education: Social Justice and Institutional Contexts. Ed. Marissa Greenberg and Elizabeth Williamson. Edinburgh University Press. 2024. 126-43.

“Trial by Jury in Early Modern England.” The Routledge Encyclopedia of the Renaissance World. Ed. Kristen Poole: topics ed. Wendy Hyman. 2023. Published here: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367347093-RERW39-1

“The English Inns of Court.” The Routledge Encyclopedia of the Renaissance World. Ed. Kristen Poole; topics ed. Wendy Hyman. 2023. Published here: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367347093-RERW70-1

“Jurisprudence by Aphorisms: Francis Bacon and the ‘Uses’ of Small Forms.” Law, Culture and the Humanities. 18.3 (2022). First published Jan. 31, 2019.  

“On Judges and the Art of Judicature: Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 2.” Studies in Philology 114.1 (2017): 97-123.

“Before the Right to Remain Silent: The Examinations of Anne Askew and Elizabeth Young.” The Sixteenth Century Journal 43.3 (2012): 667-679.

“‘He Only Talks’: Arruntius and the Formation of Interpretive Communities in Ben Jonson’s Sejanus.” The Ben Jonson Journal 18.1 (2011): 126-140.

Selected Book Reviews

Loftis, Sonya Freeman. Shakespeare and Disability Studies. Oxford Shakespeare Topics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Renaissance Quarterly 76, no. 2 (2023): 797-99. doi:10.1017/rqx.2023.298.

Katherine Schaap Williams. Unfixable Forms: Disability, Performance, and the Early Modern English Theater. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2021. Modern Philology. Published here: journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/722265

Selected Fellowships and Grants

  • Racial Justice Project Fund for “Uncommon Bodies” Symposium, Macalester College, 2023-24.
  • RaceB4Race Second book Institute, 2023.
  • Paul O. Kristeller Fellowship, Renaissance Society of America, 2022.
  • UMN Center for Premodern Studies, Research Workshop Grant for “Uncommon Bodies” (year 1, 2, 3, and 4) with Jennifer Row (French), 2019-present. Twitter @uncommonbodies.
  • Macalester, Itzkowitz Solon Warde Grant for Course Development, “Once upon a Crime,” 2020.
  • The Huntington Library, Francis Bacon Foundation Fellowship, 2019.
  • The Huntington Library, Francis Bacon Foundation Fellowship, 2014.
  • Mellon Academy for Advanced Study in the Renaissance Research Fellowship, 2014.
  • USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute, Dissertation Fellowship, 2012-13.

Links

Personal Website: penelopegeng.com 

Education

BA (Honors) in English: University of Toronto
MA in Humanities: University of Chicago
MA in English: University of Southern California
PhD in English: University of Southern California