As an undergraduate, I enrolled at St. Jerome’s University, and was profoundly influenced by my English courses on the main campus as well as across the creek. In particular, the courses that I took with Professor Katherine Acheson, which featured close readings of early modern writers such as Shakespeare and Milton, illuminated the rich possibilities available in the study of early modern literature and culture. At the same time, I nurtured an interest in language and language theory, developed in courses such as linguistics and semiotics. A reading course on Hamlet that combined language theory with literary analysis provided my moment of epiphany, and after completing an MA degree at York University, I arrived at the University of Toronto to pursue graduate work in linguistic approaches to Shakespeare. My dissertation focused on easily overlooked details of Shakespeare’s language to explore how Shakespeare’s speakers situate themselves and negotiate their identities in their language.
 
My subsequent work as a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University examined interconnections among gender, the language of time, and notions of futurity in Shakespeare’s late plays. Most recently, I have been at work on a project that that considers Shakespeare’s language in the broader cultural and linguistic climate of early modern England, with a particular emphasis on the rapid changes underway in the English language during Shakespeare’s lifetime.
 
Now, back in Waterloo and teaching Shakespeare at St. Jerome’s, I feel that I have truly come home.

Grants
SSHRC Insight Development Grant (2017)
Newberry-Folger Research Grant (2016)
St. Jerome's University Faculty Research Grant (2014)

Shakespeare
Early modern drama and poetry
History of English