Humanities and Arts
Michelle K. Ephraim
Associate Professor
Office: Salisbury Laboratories, 237
Phone: +1-508-831-6129
Fax: +1-508-831-5932
ephraim@wpi.edu
Educational Background
- B.A., Tufts University, 1991
- M.A., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1993
- Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1998
Research
My book on representations of Jewish women in sixteenth and seventeenth century English drama, Reading the Jewish Woman on the Elizabethan Stage, will be published by Ashgate Press in February 2008 (Ashgate) . The first book-length examination of Jewish women in Renaissance drama, this study explores fictional representations of the female Jew in academic, private and public stage performances during Queen Elizabeth I’s reign; it links lesser-known dramatic adaptations of the biblical Rebecca, Deborah, and Esther with the Jewish daughters made famous by Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare on the popular stage.
Some of my new research focuses on Renaissance medical writings about pregnancy and childbirth. My book chapter on Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, "Hermione's Suspicious Body: Adultery and Superfetation in The Winter's Tale" (Performing Maternity in Early Modern England, eds. Kathryn McPherson and Kathryn Moncrief (Ashgate, 2007). examines contemporary anxieties about “superfetation” (double conception) in early modern medical discourse.
Although I'm a Shakespearean and early modernist by training, I write on a broad range of topics in gender studies and Jewish studies across different time periods.
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