Shakespeare, musicals, playwrights today—if it’s theater or literature, I love to teach it, and I’m thrilled to write about it.
I’m a visiting scholar at Portland State University, the scholar-in-residence at the Portland Shakespeare Project, and a frequent guest lecturer at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. In 2016, I received the Graves Award from the American Council of Learned Societies for outstanding teaching in the humanities.
My articles on Shakespeare and contemporary culture—from Shakespeare’s language, novel adaptations, and the history of history plays to Lorraine Hansberry, Quiara Alegría Hudes, and Mary Kathryn Nagle—have appeared recently in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The New York Times. My pandemic spoof, "What Shakespeare Actually Did During the Plague," was made into a short film by PBS.
My current projects include consulting on a documentary film about tribal sovereignty in law and theater, designing a public humanities center in Portland, planning a commemoration of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s First Folio, and writing a book for Simon & Schuster about the education of Lin-Manuel Miranda.
I received my B.A. in History from Yale and my Ph.D. in English from Harvard, where I helped to edit the Norton Shakespeare.
My wife and I met in a fifth-grade production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. We live with our two children and a puppy in Portland, Oregon.
See my complete CV here.