Alexa Alice Joubin
Alexa Alice Joubin
Professor of English, Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Theatre, International Affairs, and East Asian Languages and Cultures; Co-director of the Digital Humanities Institute, Middlebury College John M. Kirk, Jr. Chair in Medieval and Renaissance Lit
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Alexa teaches in the English department, is an affiliated faculty in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and co-founded the GW Digital Humanities Institute. She directed the Dean's Scholars in Shakespeare (a signature program of GW’s Columbian College of Arts and Sciences). At MIT, she is co-founder and co-director of the open access Global Shakespeares digital performance archive. Her publications can be accessed on ResearchGate.
Her teaching and publications are unified by a commitment to understanding the mobility of early modern and postmodern cultures in their literary, performative, and digital forms of expression. Her research has been funded by the Fulbright, National Endowment for the Humanities, American Council of Learned Societies, Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, International Shakespeare Association, Folger Institute, and other agencies.
Her latest books include Race (co-authored; Routledge New Critical Idiom series), Local and Global Myths in Shakespearean Performance (co-edited; Palgrave), and Shakespeare and the Ethics of Appropriation (co-edited; Palgrave). She is co-general editor of The Shakespearean International Yearbook, and has guest-edited special issues of the journals Shakespeare: Journal of the British Shakespeare Association, Asian Theatre Journal, and Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation. She received the MLA’s Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize, an honorable mention of NYU’s Joe A. Callaway Prize for the Best Book on Drama or Theatre, and the International Convention of Asian Scholars (ICAS) Colleagues’ Choice Award.
She chaired the MLA committee on the New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare and edits the Palgrave-Macmillan book series on “Global Shakespeares”. She has taught at Lincoln College, Oxford, as an early modern studies faculty of the Middlebury College Bread Loaf School of English (a summer graduate program) and in South Korea as distinguished visiting professor at Seoul National University.
In her outreach work, Alexa has testified before congress in a congressional briefing on the humanities and globalization, and been interviewed by BBC 4 (TV), BBC Radio (in D.C., London and Edinburgh), The Economist, Voice of America, Foreign Policy, Index on Censorship, Hay Festival, Edinburgh Festival, and various outlets and podcasts by Oxford University Press, Folger Shakespeare Library, and other journals, news media, and publishers in the U.S., China, Japan, Korea, and Brazil.
At Middlebury College Alexa holds the John M. Kirk, Jr. Chair in Medieval and Renaissance Literature at the Bread Loaf School of English.
Books
Shakespeare and East Asia (Oxford University Press, 2021)
Race, co-authored with Martin Orkin. New Critical Idiom series (New York: Routledge, 2019).
Screening Shakespeare, an open-access interactive textbook, George Washington University, 2022
Onscreen Allusions to Shakespeare: International Films, Television, and Theatre, co-edited with Victoria Bladen (Palgrave, 2022)
Sinophone Adaptations of Shakespeare: An Anthology, 1987-2007, ed. and translated by Alexa Alice Joubin (Palgrave, 2022)
Local and Global Myths in Shakespearean Performance, co-edited with Aneta Mancewicz (New York: Palgrave, 2018)
Shakespeare and the Ethics of Appropriation, co-edited with Elizabeth Rivlin (Palgrave, 2014)
Book Series Editor: Palgrave Macmillan's "Global Shakespeares” series
The Shakespearean International Yearbook Vo. 19: Shakespeare and Refugees, co-edited with Tom Bishop (Routledge, 2022)
The Shakespearean International Yearbook Vo. 18: Soviet Shakespeare, co-edited with Tom Bishop (Routledge, 2020)
The Shakespearean International Yearbook Vol. 17: Shakespeare and Value, co-edited with Tom Bishop and Simon Haines (Routledge, 2017)
Recent Articles
"Transgender Theory and Global Shakespeare," Performing Shakespearean Appropriations: Essays in Honor of Christy Desmet, ed. Darlena Ciraulo, Matthew Kozusko, Robert Sawyer (Lanham, MD: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2022), 161-176″
"Teaching Shakespeare in a Time of Hate," Shakespeare Survey 74 (2021): 15-29 (with Lisa Starks)
"Screening Anti-Asian Racism: Gendered and Racialized Discourses in Film and Television," Prism: Theory and Modern Chinese Literature 19.1 (March 2022): 167-180. DOI 10.1215/25783491-9645962
"Afterword: Towards a regional methodology of culture," Disseminating Shakespeare in the Nordic Countries: Shifting Centres and Peripheries in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Nely Keinänen and Per Sivefors (London: Bloomsbury, 2022), 291-296.
"Screening Social Justice: Performing Reparative Shakespeare against Vocal Disability," Adaptation 14.2 (August 2021): 187–205.
“Global Studies,” The Arden Research Handbook of Contemporary Shakespeare Criticism, ed. Evelyn Gajowski (London: Bloomsbury, 2021), pp. 247-261
"Performing Reparative Transgender Identities from Stage Beauty to The King and the Clown," Trans Historical: Gender Plurality before the Modern, ed. Greta LaFleur, Masha Raskolnikov, and Anna Klosowska (Cornell University Press, 2021), 322-349
“Uncomfortable Bedfellows: Shakespeare and Global Studies,” Actes des congrès de la Société française Shakespeare 40 (2022),
“Deconstructing Compulsory Realpolitik in Cultural Studies: An Interview with Alexa Alice Joubin,” The American Journal of Chinese Studies 28.2 (October, 2021): 115-130. Interviewed by David Kenley and William Sewell
“Global mediation: Performing Shakespeare in the age of networked and digital cultures,” The Arden Research Handbook of Shakespeare and Contemporary Performance, ed. Peter Kirwan and Kathryn Prince (Bloomsbury, 2021), pp. 132-150
"Can the Biopic Subjects Speak? Disembodied Voices in The King's Speech and The Theory of Everything." A Companion to the Biopic, ed. Deborah Cartmell and Ashley D. Polasek (Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2020), 269-282
"Others within: Ethics in the age of global Shakespeare." Routledge Handbook of Shakespeare and Global Appropriation, ed. Christy Desmet, Sujata Iyengar, and Miriam Jacobson (London: Routledge, 2020), pp. 25-36
"King Lear on the small screen and its pedagogical implications," in Shakespeare on Screen: King Lear, ed. Victoria Bladen, Sarah Hatchuel, and Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019).
"Performing Commemoration: The Cultural Politics of Locating Tang Xianzu and Shakespeare." Asian Theatre Journal 36.2 (Fall 2019): 275-280
"Screening Gender Identities and Ophelia: Victimhood and Feminism." Scripta Uniandrade, 17.1 (2019)
"Shakespeare Theatre Company' s Macbeth and the Limits of Multiculturalism." Early Modern Culture 13 (2018): 240-246
"Global Shakespeares as Methodology." Shakespeare: Journal of the British Shakespeare Association 9.3 (2013): 273-290
"Global Shakespeare Criticism beyond the Nation State." Chapter 25 of The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Performance, ed. James C. Bulman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 423-440
"Global Shakespeares in World Markets and Archives: An Introduction to the Special Issue." Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 11.1 (2017)
“Shakespeare on Film in Asia.” Chapter 12 of The Shakespearean World, ed. Jill L. Levenson and Robert Ormsby (London: Routledge, 2017), pp. 225-240
"Boomerang Shakespeare: Foreign Shakespeare in Britain." The Cambridge Guide to the Worlds of Shakespeare Vol. 2: The World's Shakespeare, 1660-Present, ed. Bruce Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 1094-1101.
"Global Shakespeare." Oxford Companion to Shakespeare 2nd Edition, ed. Michael Dobson, Stanley Wells, Will Sharpe, and Erin Sullivan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015): pp. 146-147.
"Global Diasporas as Reflected in the Work of Ong Keng Sen." The Cambridge Guide to the Worlds of Shakespeare Vol. 2: The World's Shakespeare, 1660-Present, ed. Bruce Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 1212-1219.
Introduction. Asian Shakespeares on Screen: Two Films in Perspective, special issue, edited by Alexa Huang, Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 4.2 (Spring/Summer 2009).
"Translation as a Theme in Shakespeare's Plays." Source: A Quarterly Publication of the American Translators Association's Literary Division No. 65 (Fall 2015): 24-32
Intercultural Theatre and Shakespeare Productions in Asia, in Routledge Handbook of Asian Theatre, ed. Siyuan Liu. New York: Routledge, 2016. pp. 504-526
"Something Out of Nothing: On Improvisation and Theater by Lai Shengchuan (Stan)." In Columbia Sourcebook of Literary Taiwan, ed. Sung-sheng Yveonne Chang, Michelle Yeh, Ming-ju Fan (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), pp. 368-373
"The Brave New World of the Mother Tongue: Taiwanese-language Literature Under Construction." In Columbia Sourcebook of Literary Taiwan, ed. Sung-sheng Yveonne Chang, Michelle Yeh, Ming-ju Fan (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), pp. 440-441
“Meditation on Hamlet.” Man Ray-Human Equations: A Journey from Mathematics to Shakespeare, ed. Wendy Grossman and Edouard Sebline. Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2015. pp. 174-175. (ISBN 978-3-7757-3920-7). Accompanying the exhibition in spring 2015 at Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.
“‘It is the east’: Shakespearean Tragedies in East Asia,” chapter 54 of The Oxford Handbook to Shakespearean Tragedy, ed. Michael Neill and David Schalkwyk. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. pp. 896-911.
"Encountering Shakespeare, Imagining China." A New Literary History of Modern China, ed. David Wang. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, in press.
“Shakespeare on Film in Asia.” The Shakespearean World, ed. Jill Levenson and Robert Ormsby. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, in progress.
“Shakespearean Performance as a Multilingual Event: Alterity, Authenticity, Liminality.” In Interlinguicity, Internationality, and Shakespeare, ed. Michael Saenger. Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014. pp. 190-2089.
Co-authored with Angelica Duran. “Mo Yan’s Work and the Politics of Literary Humor.” In Mo Yan in Context: Nobel Laureate and Global Storyteller, ed. Angelica Duran and Yuhan Huang. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2014. pp. 153-16
”The Locality of Cultural Identity and Knowledge Production." Chung Wai Literary Quarterly 43.1 (March 2014): 191-195
Select Keynote and Plenary Lectures
Stratford Festival, Stratford, Canada, September 29, 2018
“'To unpath'd waters, undream'd shores': Shakespeare in the World." Mostly Mozart Festival, Lincoln Center, New York, NY, July 21, 2018
PEN America World Voices Festival: "Power of the Arts: From Propaganda to Free Speech." Brooklyn, New York, May 2, 2017
Roundtable at the British Embassy Ambassador’s Residence, D.C.: “Power of the Arts: From Propaganda to Free Speech.” Sponsored by the British Council, May 8, 2017
Congressional Briefing: Globalization and the Humanities in the Twenty-first Century. Rayburn House Office Building, Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C., May 16, 2013
Opening Keynote: "Citational Theatricality and Shakespeare." Elsinore Conference 2016: Shakespeare – The Next 400 Years, Kronborg Castle, Helsingør, Denmark, 22-24 April, 2016
Hay Festival: "Global Shakespeare: Protest, Dissent and Slipping by the Censors." With Simon Callow, Rachael Jolley, David Aaronovitch. Hay-on-Wye, Wales, UK, 3 June, 2016
The Wertheim Lecture: “Worlds Elsewhere: Global Shakespeare and Its Discontent.” University of Indiana Bloomington. 5 November 2015
Plenary, International Shakespeare Conference: “The Task of the Performance Archive: Shakespeare Studies and Digital Humanities,” Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon, Aug. 11, 2010
Keynote: “The Future of Digital and Analogue Humanities.” Conference on Book::Logic - Text Editing and Digital Culture conference, University of Western Australia, Perth, June 29, 2012.
Opening Keynote: “Others Within: Ethics in the Age of Global Shakespeare.” Conference on Appropriation in the Age of Global Shakespeare, University of Georgia, November 13-14, 2015.
Concluding remarks, "'Nothing Will Come of Nothing': From Archival Silence to Quoting Shakespeare Out of Context," Conference on Shakespeare in Tatters: Referencing Shakespeare on Film and Television. Universita degli studi di Ferrara, Italy, May 11, 2013
Keynote, “Global Shakespeares as Methodologies: Globe Theatres and Imaginations of the Globe.” Worlds Elsewhere: Globalization and Early Cultures conference, University of California Irvine, April 18-19, 2014
Keynote, “‘Fair Ophelia’ in Victorian and East Asian Visual Cultures.” The 67th KFLC conference: The Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Conference, University of Kentucky, Lexington, April 10-12, 2014
Keynote, Shakespeare’s Globe: 9th Annual Liberal Studies Colloquium, New York University, March 28, 2014.
Closing Keynote address, "The Meanings of Shakespeare and Asia in the Post-National Age," De Montfort University (UK) conference on Shakespeare and Japan, Feb. 26, 2013. Sponsored by the British Shakespeare Association journal Shakespeare
MLA Presidential Forum: “What Makes Language Literary?”, Seattle, January 6-9, 2012.
Shakespeare, digital humanities, film studies, race and gender, globalization, Asian-European cultural exchange, literary theory, early modern and postmodern literary and performance cultures, translation theories, intercultural theatre Sinphone and Chinese theatre and film
Digital Humanities Projects
Ph.D., Comparative Literature, Stanford University
Selected Honors
Middlebury College John M. Kirk, Jr. Chair in Medieval and Renaissance Literature, Bread Loaf School of English
Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Global Shakespeare, Queen Mary University of London and University of Warwick, UK, 2014-2015
ACLS Frederick Burkhardt Residential Fellow at the Folger Shakespeare Library, 2015-2016
University of Essex (UK) International Visiting Fellow, Department of Literature Film and Theatre Studies, 2017
George Washington University Columbia College of Arts and Sciences Enhanced Travel Award, 2015-2016
George Washington University Sigur Center for Asian Studies research grant, 2015
George Washington University Columbia College of Arts and Sciences research travel grant, 2015
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada) grant for A Web Edition of Shakespeare’s King Lears; PI: Michael Best; with Andrew Griffin and Lynne Bradley, 2012-2017
George Washington University Office of the Vice President for Research University Facilitating Fund research grant, 2012
Short-term Fellowship, Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C., Spring 2012
Modern Language Association (MLA) Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Comparative Studies, 2011
American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) research fellowship, 2010
Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation publication grant, 2009