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Faculty & Staff

Areas of Expertise

Shakespeare; English Renaissance; literature and science in 16th & 17th centuries; theories and theatres of artificial life

Degrees

PhD Indiana University

Professional Publications & Contributions

• Entries for "Science Fiction," "Technology," "Time," and "Utopia" in The Shakespeare Encyclopedia, ed. Patricia Parker (ABC-CLIO). Forthcoming 2016.
• “Rise of the Poet of the Apes.” Shakespeare Studies. eds. Susan Zimmerman and Elizabeth Harvey. Forthcoming 2013.
• "Now." Chapter for 21st Century Approaches to Early Modern Theatricality, ed. Henry Turner. Oxford University Press. Forthcoming 2013.
• Maisano, Scott. "The Thesean Obscene" (Lecture Stream) in A Midsummer Night’s Dream for iPad. Dir. Ellen MacKay. Luminary Digital Media. Forthcoming 2013. iPad Application.
• "Whither Brutus?: Rethinking Julius Caesar in the New American Century." Shakespeare Yearbook, eds. Julia Reinhard Lupton and Matthew Biberman. 2011. 161-170.
• "Descartes avec Milton: The Automata in the Garden." The Automaton in English Renaissance Literature, ed. Wendy Hyman. London: Ashgate Press, 2011: 21-44
• "Reforming Metamorphoses: The Epic in Translation as a Major Work of the English Renaissance." Approaches to Teaching Ovid and the Ovidian Tradition, eds. Barbara Weiden Boyd and Cora Fox. New York: Modern Language Association, 2010: 142-150.
• "Shakespearean Primatology: A Diptych." Postmedieval: A Journal of Medieval Cultural Studies. Spring/Summer 2010, 115-123.
• "Infinite Gesture: Automata and Emotions in Shakespeare and Descartes." Genesis Redux: Essays on the History and Philosophy of Artificial Life, ed. Jessica Riskin. University of Chicago Press, 2007: 63-84.
• "Shakespeare's Last Act: The Starry Messenger and the Galilean Book in Cymbeline." Configurations: A Journal of Literature, Science and Technology 12:3 2004 (2007), 401-434.
• "Shakespeare's Dead Sea Scroll: On the Apocryphal Appearance of Pericles." Shakespeare Yearbook. Eds. Douglas Brooks and Ann Thompson. 2007: 167-193.
• "Reading Underwater; or, Fantasies of Fluency from Shakespeare to Mièville and Emshwiller." Extrapolation: A Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy 45:1 (2004), 76-88.

Additional Information

 

COURSES AT UMASS BOSTON

Engl 637 Milton (graduate)
Engl 633 Shakespeare (graduate)
Engl 631 Medieval to Renaissance Lit (graduate)
Engl 628 Ovid and Spenser (graduate)
Engl 612: Teaching of Shakespeare (graduate)
Engl 402: The Renaissance in England
Engl 383: Shakespeare (Late Plays)
Engl 382: Shakespeare (Early Plays)
HON 380 The Theater of Artificial Life (junior colloquium)
Engl 201 Five British Writers
Engl 200 Understanding Literature

CURRENT PROJECTS

Shakespeare's Revolution: The Scientific Romances (book manuscript in preparation).

The Famous Ape: Shapespeare and Primatology (a book manuscript in preparation, with coauthor Holly Dugan)

Renaissance Posthumanism (a collection of essays coedited with Joseph Campana)

St. Patrick for Ireland (w/ Robert Lublin). A critical edition of the 1639 play for the Oxford University Press Complete Works of James Shirley in 10 Volumes (eds. Eugene Giddens, Teresa Grant, and Barbara Ravelhofer).

OTHER MEDIA (Rare Book Exhibit, Reference Encyclopedia, and Radio Interview)

All the World's a Page: 400 Years of Shakespeare in Print. Curated Exhibit. Boston Public Library. July 1st – September 30th 2008. (Click here to read about the exhibit.)

Encyclopedia Entries for "FORBIDDEN PLANET," "SCIENCE FICTION," "TECHNOLOGY," "TIME," and "UTOPIA" in The Shakespeare Encyclopedia, ed. Patricia Parker (ABC-CLIO). Forthcoming 2010.

"Shakespeare after 9/11." Interview for MLA Radio Program, What's the Word, hosted by Sally Placksin. Airdate September 2009.

BOOK REVIEWS

Review: A Brave New World of Knowledge: Shakespeare's 'The Tempest' and Early Modern Epistemology, by B.J. Sokol. Modern Language Review 100:3 (2005), 773-4.

Review: Allegory, Space, and the Material World in the Writings of Edmund Spenser, by Christopher Burlinson. Spenser Review. (Winter 2008), 2-4

Review: Humanism, Machinery, and Renaissance Literature, by Jessica Wolfe. Early Modern Literary Studies 14:2 (September 2008).

Review: Engines of the Imagination: Renaissance Culture and the Rise of the Machine, by Jonathan Sawday. Seventeenth-Century News. 67:3&4 (2009).

SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS

Professor Maisano has been an invited speaker at The Stanford Humanities Center, The Humanities Center at Harvard, The Humanities Research Center at Rice University, an AHRC-Funded Workshop on James Shirley at St. Catharine's College (University of Cambridge), The Undergraduate Shakespeare Conference at The College of the Holy Cross, The Shakespeare in the Spring Event at The University of Akron, Early Modern Theatricality in the 21st Century at Rutgers University, and at annual conferences of the  Shakespeare Association of America and the Modern Language Association.