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Professor Paul Yachnin

Position: 
Tomlinson Professor of Shakespeare Studies
Paul Yachnin
Office: 
IPLAI 3610 McTavish, 2nd Floor – Rm 21-3 (NW corner Penfield / McTavish next to Thomson House)
Phone: 
514-398-7185
Fax Number: 
514-398-8146
Email Address: 
paul [dot] yachnin [at] mcgill [dot] ca
Mailing Address: 

McGill University Department of English
853 Sherbrooke Street West
Arts Building
Montreal, QC H3A 0G5 CANADA

Degrees and Academic Title(s): 

B.A. (McGill); M.Litt. (Edinburgh); Ph.D. (Toronto), Tomlinson Professor of Shakespeare Studies

Department Chair

Director of the Making Publics project

General Research Areas: 
Early Modern
Seventeenth Century
Teaching and Research Areas: 

Early modern literature, especially Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton; Law and Literature; Animalities in History and Literature; Literary History; Early modern publics and public making; Institutional Politics of Literature; Textual Editing

Taught previously at: 

University of Toronto, Wilfrid Laurier University, University of British Columbia

Awards and Fellowships: 
  • SSHRC Major Collaborative Research Initiative Grant (2005-2010): “Making Publics: Media, Markets, and Association in Early Modern Europe”
  • FQRSC Programme de soutien aux équipes de recherché (2006-2010): “Language Incorporated: Culture Markets, Actors' Bodies, and Shakespeare's World of Words,” a project of the McGill Shakespeare and Performance Research Team
  • SSHRC Workshop Grant (2009): “Richard Helgerson and Making Publics”
  • Friends of the Library “Friend of the Year,” McGill University, 2007-08
  • Elected President of the Shakespeare Association of America, March 2009
  • Short-Term Fellowship, Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C., September-November 2009
Selected Publications : 

Books

Making Publics in Early Modern Europe: People, Things, Forms of Knowledge. Ed. Bronwen Wilson and Paul Yachnin. London and New York: Routledge, forthcoming.

Shakespeare and Character: Theory, History, Performance, and Theatrical Persons. Ed. Paul Yachnin and Jessica Slights. London: Palgrave, 2009.

Shakespeare and the Cultures of Performance. Ed. Paul Yachnin and Patricia Badir. London: Ashgate, 2008.

Shakespeare and the Eighteenth Century. Ed. Peter Sabor and Paul Yachnin. London: Ashgate, 2008.

With Anthony Dawson. The Culture of Playgoing in Shakespeare’s England: A Collaborative Debate. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. x + 215.

Stage-wrights: Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton and the Making of Theatrical Value. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997. xviii + 210.

Edition

Meeting of Gallants at an Ordinary and Plato's Cap. In The Complete Works of Thomas Middleton. Ed. Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Chapters and articles

“The Well-Hung Shrew.” Co-authored with Jennifer Shea. In Ecocritical Shakespeare. Ed. Lynne Bruckner and Dan Brayton. London: Ashgate Press, forthcoming.

“Hamlet and the Social Thing.” In Making Publics in Early Modern Europe: People, Things, Forms of Knowledge. Routledge, forthcoming.

With Desmond Manderson. “Shakespeare and Judgment: The Renewal of Law and Literature.” The European Legacy, forthcoming.

“Metatheatre and Character: The Winter’s Tale.” Co-authored with Myrna Wyatt Selkirk. In Shakespeare and Character: Theory, History, Performance, and Theatrical Persons. London: Palgrave, 2009.

“Looking for Richard II.” In Shakespeare and the Eighteenth Century. London: Ashgate, 2008.

“Sheepishness in The Winter’s Tale.” In How to Do Things with Shakespeare: New Approaches, New Essays. Ed. Laurie Maguire. Oxford: Blackwell, 2008. 210-29.

“Eating Montaigne.” In Reading Renaissance Ethics. Ed. Marshall Grossman. New York and London: Routledge, 2007. 157-72.

Current Research: 

“Theatre and Public Making in Shakespeare’s England” (a book-length study); editions of Richard II (with Anthony Dawson; for Oxford) and The Tempest (with Brent Whitted; for Broadview); an essay on Middleton and Public Spatiality for a new collection from Oxford; “Shakespeare Rules: Law, Literature, and the Public Life of the Humanities” (a book project with Desmond Manderson)