1. Faculty and Staff
  2. Elizabeth Gruber

Elizabeth Gruber

Types:

CommonwealthU University Employee
Title(s)
Professor
Department
Education

Ph.D., English

Contact Information

Courses Most Commonly Taught

  • Survey of British Literature from the Middle Ages to 1800
  • Shakespeare
  • Introduction to Literature
  • Composition
  • Advanced Topics in British Literature  

Areas of Expertise

  • Shakespeare
  • Renaissance Literature
  • Adaptation
  • Literary Theory

Courses Developed

I have created courses focusing on Shakespearean adaptation, which I taught as both a liberal arts seminar and an upper-level literature course.  I have also created specialized courses focusing on key aspects of English Renaissance literature; these have been offered as advanced literature courses.  

Research Areas

  • Shakespeare
  • Shakespearean adaptation
  • Renaissance literature and culture
  • Ecocritical approaches to Renaissance texts

Articles Published

“Building the Necropolis: Killing Mother/Nature in The Spanish Tragedy and Titus Andronicus.  Forthcoming, LIT: Literature, Interpretation, Theory.

“Back to the Future: Ecological Crisis and Recalcitrant Memory in The Tempest and Tar Baby. LIT: Literature, Interpretation, Theory 21.4 (2010): 223-41.  

“Insurgent Flesh: Epistemology and Violence in Othello and Mariam.” Rpt. in Ashgate Critical Essays on Women Writers in England, 1550-1700: Elizabeth Cary. Surrey, United Kingdom: Ashgate, 2009.  

“Practical Magic: Empathy and Alienation in Harlem Duet.” LIT: Literature, Interpretation, Theory 19.4 (October 2008): 346-66.  

“Erotic Politics Reconsidered: Desdemona's Challenge to Othello.” Borrowers & Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation. 3.2 (Spring/Summer 2008).  

“‘No Woman Would Die Like That’: Stage Beauty as Corrective Counter-Point to Othello.” Situating the Feminist Gaze and Spectatorship in Post World War II Cinema. Ed. Marcelline Block. New Castle, United Kingdom: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008.  

“Dead Girls Do It Better: Gazing Rights and the Production of Knowledge in Othello and Oroonoko.”  LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory 14 (2003): 99-117.  

“Insurgent Flesh: Epistemology and Violence in Othello and Mariam.”  Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 32 (2003): 393-410.