Erika T. Lin

Assistant Professor of English
George Mason University

ADDRESS
Department of English
George Mason University
4400 University Dr., MSN 3E4
Fairfax, VA 22030

OFFICE: Robinson A 414
E-MAIL: elin1_at_gmu.edu 		 
  Erika T. Lin specializes in early modern literature and culture, with a focus on drama, theatre, and performance. She also has interests in medieval drama, gender studies, folklore, and Asian American studies. Her first book, Shakespeare and the Materiality of Performance, theorizes early modern performance as a material medium. This study analyzes the cultural attitudes and practices that conditioned playgoers' typical ways of thinking and feeling, and it shows how these habits of mind shaped not only dramatic narratives but also the presentational dynamics of onstage action. Combining literary criticism, theatre history, cultural studies, and performance theory, this book examines the unspoken assumptions constitutive of early modern theatrical literacy: the historically-specific markers distinguishing meaningful stage signifiers from mere "background noise"; the interpretive paradigms governing audience understandings of mimesis; the affective responses generated by spectacle; and the dynamic interplay between theatre's representational strategies and presentational effects.

Lin is currently working on a new book exploring the performance dynamics of seasonal festivities and early modern commercial theatre. Some of her preliminary research for this project was published in Theatre Journal. While completing her Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania, she served as editor of the Literary Calls for Papers (CFP) mailing list and website. She also taught at the University of Louisville before joining the English Department at Mason.

Publications

Book

Shakespeare and the Materiality of Performance. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming October 2012.

Journal Articles and Book Chapters

"Popular Worship and Visual Paradigms in Love's Labor's Lost." Religion and Drama in Early Modern England: The Performance of Religion on the Renaissance Stage. Ed. Jane Hwang Degenhardt and Elizabeth Williamson. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011. 89-113. [PDF]

"'Lord of thy presence': Bodies, Performance, and Audience Interpretation in Shakespeare's King John." Imagining the Audience in Early Modern Drama, 1558-1642. Ed. Jennifer A. Low and Nova Myhill. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. 113-33. [PDF]

"Popular Festivity and the Early Modern Stage: The Case of George a Greene." Theatre Journal 61.2 (2009): 271-97. [PDF]

"Performance Practice and Theatrical Privilege: Rethinking Weimann's Concepts of Locus and Platea." New Theatre Quarterly 22.3 (2006): 283-98. [PDF]
Winner of the 2008 Martin Stevens Award for Best New Essay in Early Drama Studies from The Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society

"Mona on the Phone: The Performative Body and Racial Identity in Mona in the Promised Land." MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the United States 28 (2003): 47-57. [PDF]
Short Essays and Interviews

"Recreating the Eye of the Beholder: Dancing and Spectacular Display in Early Modern English Theatre." In "Congress on Research in Dance 2010 Conference Proceedings: Embodying Power: Work over Time," edited by Karl Rogers, supplement, Dance Research Journal 43.S1 (2011): 10-19. [PDF]

"Shakespeare and Chinese Performance at the Folger Shakespeare Library." Shakespeare Bulletin 28.1 (2010): 188-91. [PDF]

"Tiny Ninja Shakespeare." Puppetry International 21 (2007): 18-20. [PDF]

Book Reviews

Book review of Voice in Motion: Staging Gender, Shaping Sound in Early Modern England, by Gina Bloom (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). Renaissance Quarterly 61.1 (2008): 294-96. [PDF]

Book review of Women Players in England, 1500-1660: Beyond the All-Male Stage, edited by Pamela Allen Brown and Peter Parolin (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005). The Upstart Crow: A Shakespeare Journal 25 (2005): 123-26. [PDF]

 

Last Updated: 17 April 2012