Cristina León Alfar

she, her, ella

Professor, Early Modern English Literature, Hunter College, CUNY

My research interests include Early Modern English drama, particularly Shakespeare, and the intersections between literature, culture, gender, sexuality, marriage law, and politics. I teach Shakespeare, late 16th and early 17th century English drama, and early modern English women writers.

Positions

Professor, English Literature, Hunter College

Academic Interests

My research interests include Early Modern English drama, particularly Shakespeare, and the intersections between literature, culture, gender, sexuality, marriage law, and politics. I teach Shakespeare, late 16th and early 17th century English drama, and early modern English women writers. Most recently, Emily G. Sherwood and I published Reading Mistress Elizabeth Bourne: Marriage, Separation, and Legal Controversies, a collections of letters and documents chronicling the marital disputes between Elizabeth and her husband, Anthony. My book, Women and Shakespeare’s Cuckoldry Plays: Shifting Narratives of Marital Betrayal, came out with Routledge in February 2017. I am also an Editor, with Helen Ostovich, of the series “Late Tudor and Stuart Drama: Gender, Performance, and Material Culture,” for Medieval Institute Publications. For more information and access to some of my work, please see https://mla.hcommons.org/members/clalfar/https://cristinaleonalfar.hcommons.org/

series co-editor

“Late Tudor and Stuart Drama:  Gender, Performance, and Material Culture.”  Medieval Institute Publications, MIP (with Helen Ostovich, Founding Editor, Early Theatre, Professor Emeritus, McMaster University)Please contact Tyler Cloherty, acquisitions editor for the series

Publications

BOOKS:

Co-Editor, Reading Mistress Elizabeth Bourne: Marriage, Separation, and Legal Controversies.  Routledge, 2021.  “The Early Modern Englishwoman in Print, 1500-1750:  Contemporary Editions.”  Co-Editor with Emily Sherwood, University of Rochester.

Women and Shakespeare’s Cuckoldry Plays:  Shifting Narratives of Marital Betrayal. Routledge, 2017.  “Women and Gender in the Early Modern World.” Now available in paperback!

Fantasies of Female Evil:  The Dynamics of Gender and Power in Shakespearean Tragedy.  Newark: U of Delaware P, 2003.


ARTICLES (peer reviewed)

“Abandoning Tragedy in James Ijames’s Fat Ham.” Borrowers and Lenders, vol. 15 no. 1, Forthcoming Sept 2023.

“Speaking Truth to Power as Feminist Ethics in Richard III.” Social Research: An International Quarterly, vol. 86, no. 3, Nov. 2019, pp. 789–819.


“‘Let’s Consult together’: Women’s Agency and the Gossip Network in The Merry Wives of Windsor.”  Invited for publication in The Merry Wives of Windsor:  New Critical Essays. Eds.  Evelyn Gajowski and Phyllis Rackin.  New York: Routledge, 2015. 38-50.


“‘Proceed in Justice’: Narratives of Marital Betrayal in The Winter’s Tale.”  Invited for publication in Justice, Women and Power in English Renaissance Drama, Edited by Andrew J. Majeski and Emily Detmer-Goebel.  Madison and Teaneck, N.J.:  Farleigh Dickinson UP, 2009.  46-65.

“Elizabeth Cary’s Female Trinity: Breaking Custom with Mosaic Law in The Tragedy of

Mariam.”   Early Modern  Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Volume 3, (2008):  61-103.

 


“Looking for Goneril and Regan.”  Privacy, Domesticity and Women in Early Modern England, ed. Corinne Abate. Aldershot, Hampshire, UK:  Ashgate, 2003.  167-198.


“‘Blood Will Have Blood’: Power, Performance, and Lady Macbeth’s Gender Trouble.”  J x: A Journal in Culture and Criticism.  2.2 (1998): 179-207.


“King Lear’s ‘Immoral’ Daughters and the Politics of Kingship.”  Exemplaria:  A Journal of Theory in Medieval and Renaissance Studies.  8.2 (1996):  375-400.


“Staging the Feminine Performance of Desire:  Masochism in The Maid’s Tragedy.”   Papers on Language and Literature.  31.3 (1995):  313-333.

For more information

Routledge Featured Author Page

HumCommons Profile Page