Vanessa I. Corredera

Dr. Vanessa I. Corredera is Chair and Professor in the Department of English at Andrews University. She earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in English at Northwestern University, and her B.A. in English Literature from Andrews University. While she loves to read about and teach all things early modern drama, she is especially passionate about examining the modern afterlives of these dramas, particularly Shakespeare in contemporary performance, adaptation and appropriation, and popular culture in both the U.S. and U.K.

Dr. Corredera’s research employs intersectional theoretical frameworks and a combination of literary and cultural history to interrogate the race work and gender work early modern drama advances both in the past and today. Her first monograph, Reanimating Shakespeare’s Othello in Post-Racial America (Edinburgh University Press, 2022), turns to versions of Othello created between 2008-2016 to analyze how these Othellos manifest or contest the the racial frameworks popularized in America’s so-called post-racial era, frameworks that result in either anti-black or anti-racist versions of Othello.

She is currently working on two in-progress monographs. The first monograph brings together an historicist Premodern Critical Race Studies approach with a presentist inquiry into anticolonial adaptations as it explores the contact points between adapted Shakespeare, empire, race, and exile. She argues that adaptations of Shakespeare can help contemporary audiences—who often have minimal imperial literacy—learn about cross-temporal imperial histories and through them, better understand the metaphorical and material forms of exile that empire’s racial divisions create. Her second monograph-in-progress examines American 21st-century stage performances by Black Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) theatermakers that adapt Shakespeare—the man and his works—to uncover the adaptive and performance strategies that allow these theatermakers to contest pervasive forms of domination: racism, heterosexism, patriarchalism, and classism.

Dr. Corredera is also dedicated to collaborative scholarly work that strives to put the early modern and the modern in productive dialogue. She is co-editing three such projects: an edited collection on Shakespeare and exile (under contract with ACMRS Press), an edited collection on Shakespeare, race, and popular culture (under contract with Bloomsbury), and an anthology of Caridad Svich’s Shakespearean adaptations (under contract with Methuen Drama).

In addition to teaching courses that uncover the ways literary studies can help us more ethically address the complex relationships between art, identity, and representation, Dr. Corredera strives to use her expertise to reach wider audiences, leading workshops on Shakespeare and embodiment in performance, race and pedagogy in the college classroom, and how to Shakespeare, race, and adaptations in high school.

Dr. Corredera serves on the editorial boards of Shakespeare Bulletin and Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation, and she is also a General Editor of Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation. She deeply values her service to he profession, including her roles as is a Race and Ethnicity in the Profession Delegate for the Modern Language Association and as a trustee for the Shakespeare Association of America.