Alysia Kolentsis

As an undergraduate, I enrolled at St. Jerome’s University, and was profoundly influenced by my English courses on the main campus as well as across the creek. In particular, the courses that I took with Professor Katherine Acheson, which featured close readings of early modern writers such as Shakespeare and Milton, illuminated the rich possibilities available in the study of early modern literature and culture. At the same time, I nurtured an interest in language and language theory, developed in courses such as linguistics and semiotics. A reading course on Hamlet that combined language theory with literary analysis provided my moment of epiphany, and after completing an MA degree at York University, I arrived at the University of Toronto to pursue graduate work in linguistic approaches to Shakespeare. My dissertation focused on easily overlooked details of Shakespeare’s language to explore how Shakespeare’s speakers situate themselves and negotiate their identities in their language.
 
My subsequent work as a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University examined interconnections among gender, the language of time, and notions of futurity in Shakespeare’s late plays. Most recently, I have been at work on a project that that considers Shakespeare’s language in the broader cultural and linguistic climate of early modern England, with a particular emphasis on the rapid changes underway in the English language during Shakespeare’s lifetime.
 
Now, back in Waterloo and teaching Shakespeare at St. Jerome’s, I feel that I have truly come home.

The content that follows may only represent a portion of the Faculty member’s work.

Books

Shakespeare's Common Language. London: Bloomsbury (Arden Shakespeare), 2020.

Shakespeare On Stage and Off. Eds. Kenneth Graham and Alysia Kolentsis. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2020.

Chapters

“Shakespeare’s Creativity With Words.” The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare’s Language. Ed. Lynne Magnusson and David Schalkwyk. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Forthcoming.

“Shakespeare’s Lexical Style.” Shakespeare In Our Time: A Shakespeare Association of America Companion. Ed. Dympna Callaghan and Suzanne Gossett. London: Bloomsbury (Arden Shakespeare), 2016. 306-311.

“‘Grammar Rules’ in the Sonnets: Sidney and Shakespeare.” The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare’s Poetry. Ed. Jonathan Post, Oxford: Oxford UP, 2013. 168-184.

Articles

“Tragedy and Compromise in George Eliot’s Armgart and Middlemarch.” Genre: Forms of Discourse and Culture 49.3 (2016): 303-329.

“Shakespeare’s Linguistic Creativity: A Reappraisal.” Literature Compass 11.4 (2014): 258- 266.

“Introduction: Gendering Time and Space in Early Modern England.” Co-authored with Katherine R. Larson. Renaissance and Reformation 35.1 (2012): 1-16.

Others

Review of Shakespeare’s World of Words, ed. Paul Yachnin. Shakespeare Quarterly 68.1 (2017).

Review of Lucy Munro’s Archaic Style in English Literature, 1590-1674. Shakespeare Studies 43 (2015).

“Report From Maribor.” Parlance: The Newsletter of the Poetics and Linguistics Association (Spring 2015).

ENGL 108F: The Rebel

ENGL 200A: English Literatures 1

ENGL 362/THPERF 386: Shakespeare 1

ENGL 363/THPERF 387: Shakespeare 2

ENGL 484: Topics in Literatures Medieval to Romantic [Topic: Shakespeare's Language]

ENGL 710: Studies in Renaissance Drama [Topic: Approaches to Shakespeare's Writing]

Shakespeare

Early modern drama and poetry

History of English

The intersection of literature and linguistics

Grants

SSHRC Insight Development Grant (2017)

Newberry-Folger Research Grant (2016)

St. Jerome's University Faculty Research Grant (2014)

The content that follows may only represent a portion of the Faculty member’s work.

Administrative

St. Jerome’s University

Acting Associate Dean, July 2023- June 2024

Acting Associate Dean, July 2018- June 2019

Co-organizer, Bridges Lecture Series  

Secretary, Academic Staff Association

CAUT Defence Fund representative, Academic Staff Association

University of Waterloo

Member of UW Senate  

Co-organizer of the Shakespearean Theatre Conference (a joint endeavour of UW and The Stratford Festival)

Community

Board of Directors, The New Quarterly