Shakespeare’s Case for Vulnerability: Giving Voice to Pain and Suffering is a combination of two pieces of work. The research centers around understanding the communication of pain and suffering and how this factors into our everyday lives, in combination with an interview and video project called Evolution of Woman. This project sought to determine the different facets of pain and suffering and how, specifically, Shakespeare communicates these concepts in his work. This work also explores how the representation of pain and suffering was different between male and female roles in Shakespeare’s writing. From this research, questions were developed to interview Shakespearean experts and actors. These interviews explore the details of portraying Shakespeare’s characters and how gender plays a role in the characters’ expression of pain and suffering, as well as what it means to be a female actor in plays that are dominated by male characters.
Making Use of Massinger seeks to provide a framework by which educators can facilitate more meaningful discussion about premodern and early modern texts including playwrights like Shakespeare and Phillip Massinger. Establishing modes of engaging with literature (and thus the uses of literature) from the scholarship of Dr. Rita Felski and Dr. Ayanna Thompson, this project analyzes a study conducted by Haley Rominger on ASU undergraduate students on their reactions to Phillip Massinger's play "The Roman Actor". Ultimately this study showed that a deeper dialogue was attained in discussing topics that had modern implications such as race, gender, and power dynamics.
In my thesis, I examine the character of Henry VI in Shakespeare's Henry VI cycle (1, 2, and 3 Henry VI) - who has been critically thought of as a feminine figure - in light of the Herculean Hero model and against other male characters in the Henry VI plays. By comparing Henry to the Herculean model, there are points of similarity regarding character inaction - a feminine attribute - allowing Henry to become a more masculine figure than he has otherwise been criticized as.