Shakespeare Festival Conference
Rebecca Black – High school English and Drama teacher at Wayland High School in Wayland MI.
Kristin Clippard is a current instructor for the University of Iowa and the former Education Associate for the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival. She has worked as an actor, director, educator, dramaturg and producer across the U.S. for the past fifteen years. She graduated with a BFA in Acting from Wright State University and is currently working on an MFA in Directing from the University of Iowa (anticipated for 2013). She has trained with Shakespeare & Company, the Orlando Shakespeare Festival, the National Theatre, with foolsFury and the SITI Company. She has taught theatre to children, teens and adults for the University of Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music Preparatory Department, Orlando Shakespeare Theatre, Tony® Award winning Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Cincinnati Opera, Victoria Theatre Association, California Shakespeare Theatre, TheatreWorks, Marin Theatre Company, Word for Word, Peninsula Youth Theatre and more. In addition to teaching for the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, Kristin has developed curriculum and trained teachers for the Bay Area Shakespeare Camps and the Midnight Shakespeare program for at-risk youth and adults.
Paul Collins - (M.F.A. - University of Iowa, M.S. - Grand Valley State University, B.F.A. - University of Michigan) is an Assistant Professor and Lighting Designer at the College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina. Paul teaches Stage Lighting, Stagecraft and other courses within the theatre and dance design and production curriculum. Paul has designed lighting and scenery professionally for many theatre and dance companies in Iowa, Michigan and Maine including Iowa Summer Rep (Iowa City, IA), Riverside Theatre (Iowa City, IA), The Public Theatre (Lewiston, Maine), Jazz Dance Theatre (Ann Arbor, MI) as well as several others. He has also acted as assistant designer to Bryon Winn for The 39 Steps at Portland Stage Company, (Portland, Maine), and as Associate Lighting Designer to Christopher Akerlind on In the Night, a new work by Martha Clarke (Iowa Partnership for the Arts). Recent designs include Lost in Yonkers and I Do! I Do! for Iowa Summer Rep and Almost, Maine for the College of Charleston. Paul is a member of the United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT). Samples of his design work can be found at www.pmcdesign.com.
Sarah Enloe holds a Master of Fine Arts with an emphasis in dramaturgy, a Master of Letters with an emphasis in teaching from Mary Baldwin College’s Shakespeare and Performance Program, and a B.F.A. in theatre studies from the University of Texas at Austin. Sarah taught theatre arts at the high school level in Texas for five years, and in 2003, she won recognition as teacher of the year and an NEH fellowship to study with Shakespeare & Co. At the American Shakespeare Center, Sarah directs programming for in the areas of College Prep, Research and Scholarship (including facilitating the ASC’s partnership with Mary Baldwin College’s Masters in Shakespeare and Performance Program), Personal Renaissance, and Educator Resources. She serves on the Advisory board of The Shakespeare Factory, the Editorial Board of the online journal This Rough Magic, and is on the executive board of the Shakespeare Theatre Association. Sarah's current work is focused on the practical application of performance techniques for the English classroom.
Danielle Farrar – currently pursuing a Ph.D. in the Department of English at the University of South Florida.
William Irwin - Assistant Professor of Musical Theatre at the University of Michigan – Flint. M.F.A., Acting, University of Florida. B.A., Theatre, University of Michigan-Flint.
Geoffrey A. Johns - is a doctoral candidate of English at Michigan State University who specializes in the drama and popular culture of Early Modern England. His areas of interest include gender, social order, subjectivity, and transgression, as well as performance theories and print culture. His dissertation project is a study of literal and metaphorical "monsters" in Renaissance texts, especially those in Shakespeare's Richard III and The Tempest, as well as the anonymous Arden of Faversham and various broadside ballads and other ephemeral prints.
Angelina LaBarre - MFA candidate at Mary Baldwin College in Shakespeare and Performance Program.
Kirsten Mendoza - Kirsten is a first-year English MA student at Loyola University Chicago. She graduated with honors in English from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign after completing her undergraduate honors thesis advised by Professor Robert Markley. She is particularly interested in Early Modern and Restoration texts that assert proto-feminist ideas and the control over a woman's own sexuality and body through the performance of blackness and the marginalized female. She is excited to be attending her first conference and hopes to continue on to a PhD program.
Lisa Miller – Director, Grand Valley State University Meijer Campus; Adjunct Instructor in Liberal Studies. B.A. in English, Alma College; M.A. in English, Grand Valley State University; M.Ed.in Higher Education with an Emphasis in College Student Affairs Leadership, Grand Valley State University.
Dr. Ray Proctor - PhD in Theatre Studies from University of Wisconsin – Madison (2011), MFA in Acting from West Virginia University (1997), BFA in Acting from Webster University in Saint Louis Missouri (1993).
Dr. Nathanial B. Smith is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at Central Michigan University, where he teaches courses in medieval and early modern British and European literature. Nate received a Ph.D. in English Literature from Indiana University at Bloomington in 2008. His dissertation, "Dreams of Influence: Embodied Reading in Late Medieval and Renaissance English Literature," traces the literary depiction of dreams from Geoffrey Chaucer to Edmund Spenser. His articles have appeared in the John Donne Journal, Medievalia et Humanistica, and Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching; and a co-edited collection, "Teaching Medieval Literature off the Grid," is forthcoming from Pedagogy.
Dr. Mary I. Thompson – Associate Professor, Department of English, Sussex County Community College, NJ. Mary received her M.A. and Ph.D. in English Literature from The Catholic University of America and her B.A. in English from King’s College. While at King’s, Mary appeared as Mariana in Measure for Measure, Mistress Page in The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Rosalind in As You Like It. Most recently, she coauthored He Says/She Says Shakespeare, a work that presents six of Shakespeare’s most commonly-studied plays from the perspective of gender analysis.
Brittney Winters is a master's candidate in the Department of English at Grand Valley State University. Her research brings together critical race, gender and sexuality studies to examine the role of language in asserting or subverting mainstream attitudes towards minority groups. She also has related interests in new historicism, postcolonial theory and psychoanalytic theory. She is currently working on a master’s thesis that traces the remnants of Cold War ideology in post 1940s American literature, and how those ideologies have persisted into the post 9/11 era. Brittney received her A.B. in Comparative Literature from Princeton University in 2009 and is planning on pursuing a doctorate in English upon graduating from Grand Valley State.
Dr. Emma Annette Wilson - Holds a doctorate from the University of St. Andrews. She is a co-editor of two collections of essays on Petrus Ramus, and is currently studying for a Masters of Library and Information Science at the University of Western Ontario, Toronto, Canada.
Christopher Wilson - Ph.D. Candidate in English at UW-Madison; MA in English; BA in English and Philosophy. 7 years teaching literature and composition; 5 years tutoring in the UW Writing Center; extensive experience working with students on dissertations.
*Christopher Wilson is chairing a workshop session with two fellow Ph.D. candidates from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Chelsea Avirett and Nancy Simpson-Younger.
Page last modified September 25, 2012
