Kurt Schreyer

Education

PhD, University of Pennsylvania
MA, University of Notre Dame

About

Kurt Schreyer teaches courses primarily in Shakespeare and early English drama but his interests extend to a wide range of texts from classical antiquity to the nineteenth century and beyond. His teaching tries to foster students' curiosity by making past cultures and literatures strange rather than familiar or relevant, underscoring, in other words, the differences between pre- and early-modern societies and our own.

I’m currently undertaking a book project with the working title Shakespeare at Sea: A Cultural History of Theatricality in the Royal Navy. Its aim is to help enrich our understanding of the theatrical and literary cultures of the Royal Navy from the Age of Sail to the present. My first book, Shakespeare’s Medieval Craft: Remnants of the Mysteries on the London Stage (Cornell University Press), demonstrates the central importance of stage properties, technologies, and theatrical practices from pre-Reformation religious drama to Shakespeare’s stagecraft.

Learn more on Dr. Schreyer's personal website.

Frequently Taught Courses

ENGL 2370 – Drama: The Greatest Hits
ENGL 3310 – English Literature before 1790
ENGL 4360 – Shakespeare’s Friends & Rivals
ENGL 4370 – Shakespeare’s Tragedies & Romances
ENGL 4380 – Shakespeare’s Comedies & Histories

Research Interests

Selected Publications, Talks, and Other Works

Books

Shakespeare’s Medieval Craft: Remnants of the Mysteries on the London Stage, Cornell University Press, 2014.

Selected Book Chapters and Journal Articles

“‘And golden vizards on their faces’: Theatrical Awakening in All Is True,” Shakespeare Quarterly, 73.1-2 (Spring & Summer 2022), 121-45.

“Did Early Modern Drama Actually Happen?” in The Arden Handbook to Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama: Perspectives on Culture, Performance and Identity, eds. Michelle Dowd and Tom Rutter (Arden/Bloomsbury, 2023), 53-68.

“A Greenwich Night’s Dream: Shakespeare, Empire, and the Royal Navy in post-Armistice Britain,” in Memorializing Shakespeare: Commemoration and Collective Identity, 1916–2016, eds. Edmund G. C. King and Monika Smialkowska (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), 65-85.

“Stealing Shives: Titus Andronicus as Chaucerian anti-Romance.” Comparative Drama 55.2 (2021), 185-210.

“Moldy Pericles.” Exemplaria: Medieval, Early Modern, Theory 29.3 (Fall 2017), 210-233.

“Balaam to Bottom: Artifact and Theatrical Translation in the Sixteenth Century,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 42.2 (Spring 2012), 421-59.

Edited Works

Two plays from the 16th-Century Chester Mystery Cycle (“Cure of the Blind Man” and “Christ and the Leper”), in The Medieval Disabilities Sourcebook, ed. Cameron Hunt McNabb (Punctum Books, 2020), 419-33