English professor Andrea Stevens will be a Visiting Fellow of St. Catherine’s College, Oxford, for the 2024 Michaelmas term from Oct. 13 to Dec. 7. As a fellow, she will be working on her monograph “After Othello: Race, Disguise, and the Limits of the Stageable 1600-1800,” which explores the topics of race, representation, and appropriation on English stages during this period.
The book examines how, in the 17th century, the figure of the Black male tragic hero gets displaced by the figure of the “Maid as Moor,” a white woman only temporarily disguised as African. This trope appears in a range of plays, masques, and entertainments into the 18th century, and is a role variously performed by boy actors; amateur elite women at the English court; and eventually the first English professional actresses.
Stevens specializes in the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, and is also affiliated with the Department of Theatre, the Program in Medieval Studies, and the European Union Center.