Marjorie Rubright

BOOKS

A World of Words: Language, Earth and Embodiment in the Renaissance
— Monograph in Progress

Logomotives: Words that Change the World, 1400 -1700 Co-Edited with Stephen Spiess (Edinburgh University Press 2025)
Paperback 2026 [PAPER30 for 30% discount]

Harnessing new developments in philologies of race, in queer-, feminist-, trans-, transnational- and postcolonial philologies, as well as translation studies, Logomotives illuminates the world-making capacity of words. Bearing a wide range of linguistic, regional and disciplinary expertise, the volume’s twenty-five contributors traverse multiple geographies (Asia, Africa, Iberian Peninsula, Europe, and the Americas), work across fifteen languages and span from antiquity to our current moment to reveal how words are catalysts of cultural, political and epistemological change.



“Logomotives is a beautifully crafted study of the world-changing power of words. Ranging across diverse geographies and cultures, these essays show how words catalyse cultural, political and epistemological change in the pre-modern world. This collection will be an indispensable reference for anyone interested in the force language exerts across history.” – Jenny C. Mann, New York University

Doppelgänger Dilemmas: Anglo-Dutch Relations in Early Modern English Literature and Culture
(University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014)

… explores the tensions of Anglo-Dutch relations that emerged in the form of puns, double entendres, cognates, homophones, copies, palimpsests, doppelgängers, and other doublings of character and kind. Through readings of London's stage plays and civic pageantry, English and Continental polyglot and bilingual dictionaries and grammars, and travel accounts of Anglo-Dutch rivalries and friendships in the Spice Islands, Rubright reveals how representations of Dutchness played a vital role in shaping Englishness in virtually every aspect of early modern social life. Her innovative book sheds new light on the literary and historical forces of similitude in an era that was so often preoccupied with ethnic and cultural difference.

"The year's best utterly non-Shakespearean book [and] among the most interesting books of the year in any category. . .
Doppelgänger Dilemmas is among other things a virtuoso act of archive building."
—Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900

Reviews: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 (Spring 2016); Modern Philology (March 2016); Upstart: A Journal of English Renaissance Studies (2015); Early Modern Literary Studies (vol. 18, 2015); Journal of British Studies (2015); Renaissance Quarterly (2015); Appositions (2015)

Peer Reviewed Articles and chapters

“Gender and Sexuality: The State of the Fields.” Marjorie Rubright with co-authors: Valerie Traub (Chair), Judy Ick, Alexa Alice Joubin, Madhavi Menon, Kumiko Hilberdink-Sakamoto. Shakespeare Survey 77 (2024): 270- 280

“Speculative Philology for Nonbinary Futures” in “Gender and Sexuality: The State of the Fields.” Shakespeare Survey 77 (2024): 276-278.

‘American Moor’: Othello, Race and the Conversations Here and Now. Co-authored with Amy Rodgers. Teaching Race in the European Renaissance: A Classroom Guide. Eds. Anna Wainwright and Matthieu Chapman. Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2023. 469-87.

“Transgender Capacity in Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middelton’s The Roaring Girl (1611).” Special Issue: Early Modern Trans Studies. Eds. Simone Chess, Colby Gordon, Will Fisher. Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 19.4 (2020): 45-74.

“Becoming Scattered: The Case of Iphis’s Trans*version and the Archipelogic of John Florio’s Worlde of Wordes.” Ovidian Transversions: ‘Iphis and Ianthe’, 1300-1650. Ed. Valerie Traub, Patricia Badir, and Peggy McCracken. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019: 118-149.

“Incorporating Kate: The Myth of Monolingualism in Shakespeare’s Henry the Fifth.” The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Embodiment: Gender, Sexuality, and Race. Ed. Valerie Traub. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016: 468-490.

“Shakespeare’s Tongues: Henry V and the Babel of English” in ‘So Long Lives This’: A Celebration of Shakespeare’s Life and Work, 1616-2016. Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, 2016: 44-54.

“Shakespeare’s Global Imagination: The stranger ‘of here and everywhere,’ Othello, The Moor of Venice” in ‘So Long Lives This’: A Celebration of Shakespeare’s Life and Work, 1616-2016. Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, 2016: 55-64.

“Charting New Worlds: The Early Modern World Atlas and Electronic Archives.” Teaching Early Modern English Literature from the Archives. Eds. Heidi Brayman Hackel and Ian Frederick Moulton. The Modern Language Association of America, 2015: 201-211.

“Going Dutch in London City Comedy: Economies of Sexual and Sacred Exchange in John Marston’s The Dutch Courtesan (1605).” English Literary Renaissance 40.1 (Winter 2010): 88-112.

“An Urban Palimpsest: Migrancy, Architecture, and the Making of an Anglo-Dutch Royal Exchange.” Dutch Crossing: A Journal of Low Countries Studies 33.1 (April 2009): 23-43.

“Elizabeth (Knyvet) Clinton, The Countesse of Lincolnes Nurserie.” Reading Early Modern Women: An Anthology of Texts in Manuscript and Print, 1550-1700. Eds. Helen Ostovich and Elizabeth Sauer. New York: Routledge, 2004. 108-110.

“Teaching Component” included in Rita Dove’s The Darker Face of the Earth. 3rd ed. Ashland, Oregon: Story Line Press, 2000. 168-171.

Public Impact Research and Creative Activity
Curatorial Publication & Special Exhibitions

Shakespeare Unbound
Co-Curator & Program Organizer. Campuswide Special Exhibit. UMass Amherst, 2023-2024.
What happens when Shakespeare appears in fragments or as momentary flashes in history? With selections from the Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center, the works of W. E. B. Du Bois, Phillis Wheatley, and others are joined in conversation with William Shakespeare. At the Kinney Center, exhibits rotate throughout the academic year ranging in topic from “Arctic Shakespeare” to “Shakespeare in the Age of Mass Incarceration.” ❦ Catalogue

’So Long Lives This’: A Celebration of Shakespeare’s Life and Works, 1616-2016
Co-Curator, Special Exhibit. Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto, 2016.
2016 marks four hundred years since the death of William Shakespeare. To honor this milestone, the Fisher Library opens the year with an exhibition that explores how Shakespeare's works shaped ideas of the world beyond England, how his plays imagined self and other through language, geography and mythology and how, in turn, the production of atlases, dictionaries, and histories influenced Shakespeare's world-making art. Co-curators: Scott Schofield, Alan Galey, and Peter Blayney. ❦ Catalogue

Resilient Roots: Pollinators, Weeds, & the Art of Repair. Kinney Center Artist in Residence Exhibit with Missy Dunaway, Aliza Fassler, Bo Kim, and Suzette Marie Martin. February – August, 2026. ❦ Catalogue

Elemental Thinking: Water, Earth, Air, Fire. A four-part Art & Rare Book Exhibition. Kinney Center. Sept 2025 – January 2026. ❦ Art Exhibit ❦ Online Rare Book Exhibits ❦ Related Graduate Seminar & Campus Programming

Water-Worlds: Ripple Effects or Sea Change? Kinney Center. Co-Curated with Evan MacCarthy (Dept. of Music and Dance). March 2024 – June 2024. ❦ Print and online Catalogue ❦ Related Symposium Programming  

Earthly Extractions. Exhibition & Collaboration with UMass Fine Arts Center. Summer 2025. ❦ Catalogue

Seasonal Distortions: An Almanac for the Anthropocene. Kinney Center Artist in Residence Exhibit with Felicity Sheehy. Spring 2025. ❦ Catalogue

Fatal Flora: Poisonous Revenge Narratives. Kinney Center Artist in Residence Exhibit with Susan Montgomery. Fall 2024. ❦ Catalogue ❦ Inside UMass story here

Elusive Prize: Wonder, Wing and Transformation. Kinney Center Artist in Residence Exhibit with Brandon Graving. Spring 2024. In conjunction with the Chancellors’ gallery at Hillside. ❦ Catalogue ❦ Inside UMass story here

Apocalypse: Science and Myth. Kinney Center Artist in Residence Exhibit with Suzette Martin. April – September 2023. ❦ Catalogue ❦ Inside UMass story here ❦ Interview here

Foraged: Kitchen Garden Herbaria. Kinney Center Artist in Residence Exhibit with Madge Evers. November 2022 – March 2023. ❦ Catalogue ❦ Inside UMass story here  

Mapping Terroir: Myth and Memory. Kinney Center Artist in Residence Exhibit with Andrea Calouri. June – September 2022. ❦ Catalogue ❦ Inside UMass story here ❦ Daily Hampshire Gazette story here 

Othello, Then and Now. Kinney Center Special Exhibit in conjunction with the American Moor residency.  Kinney Center, UMass Amherst. Fall 2018. ❦ Stories on the residency here

Island Fictions. W.E.B. Du Bois Library Special Collections & Mount Holyoke College Special Collections. Teaching Exhibition, UMass Amherst. October 2018.

Shakespeare in Performance: Twelfth Night in the Archives. Stratford Ontario Shakespeare Festival, Canada. May 2017.

The Theater of the Book. Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto. May 2017.

Renaissance Keywords. Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto. Guest Speaker: David Fernández. February 2017.

Bodies on the Page: Exploring Ideas of Sex and Gender in the Renaissance. A special exhibit and teaching symposium held at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto. Guest Speaker: Dr. Scott Schofield. March 2011.

Book Reviews 

The Trials of Orpheus: Poetry, Science, and the Early Modern Sublime by Jenny C. Mann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021). Reviewed with Stephen Spiess in Shakespeare Studies Vol 52 (2024): 257-260.

Shakespearean Intersections: Language, Context, Critical Keywords by Patricia Parker (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018). Reviewed in Shakespeare Quarterly (2022): 1-4.

Sir Thomas Elyot as Lexicographer by Gabriel Stein (Oxford University Press, 2014). Reviewed in Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America 35 (2014): 351-56.