Kaara Peterson
Education
- Ph.D., Early Modern British Literature, Boston University, 2001
- M.A., British Literature, Boston University
- B.A., English, Boston University
Teaching Interests
- 16th and 17th century literature
- Shakespeare and film
- Detective Fiction
- Intersections between literature, medicine, the arts, and drama
Research Interests
- Early Modern British literature, culture, and medicine, especially drama
- Medical history
- Theater Reviews
- Art and other interdisciplinary approaches
Selected Publications
Published Works
- "Hamlet’s Touch of Picture." Hamlet: The State of Play. The Arden Shakespeare. Ed. Sonia Massai and Lucy Munro. London: Bloomsbury, 2021.
- Humorality in Early Modern Art, Material Culture, and Performance. Ed. Kaara L. Peterson and Amy Kenny. Palgrave/Macmillan, 2021.
- "Elizabeth I’s Mettle: Metallic/Medallic Portraits." Humorality in Early Modern Art, Material Culture, and Performance. Ed. Peterson and Kenny. Palgrave Macmillan, 2021.
- "Picturing Elizabeth I's Triumph of Melancholy." English Literary Renaissance. 48.1 (Winter 2018): 1-40.
- "Medical Discourses of Virginity and the Bed-Trick in Shakespearean Drama." The Palgrave Handbook of Early Modern Literature and Science. Ed. Howard J. Marchitello and Evelyn Tribble. London: Macmillan, 2017. 377-99.
- "The Ring's the Thing: Elizabeth's Virgin Knot Eternal and All's Well That Ends Well." Studies in Philology 113.1 (Winter 2016): 101-31.
- "Elizabeth I's Virginity and the Body of Evidence: Jonson's Notorious Crux." Renaissance Quarterly 68.3 (Fall 2015): 840-71.
- . Ed. Kaara L. Peterson and Deanne Williams. Palgrave (March 2012).
- Popular Medicine, Hysterical Disease, and Social Controversy in Shakespeare's England. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010.
- "Historica Passio: King Lear, Early Modern Medicine, and Editorial Practice." Shakespeare Quarterly 57.1 (Spring 2006): 1-22.
- "Re-Anatomizing Melancholy: Burton and the Logic of Humoralism." Textual Healing: Essays on Medieval and Early Modern Medicine. Ed. Elizabeth Lane Furdell. Leiden: Brill, 2005. 139-67.
- "Shakespeare Revivifications: Early Modern Undead." Shakespeare Studies XXXII (Fall 2004): 40-66.
- Disease, Diagnosis, and Cure on the Early Modern Stage. Ed. Stephanie Moss and Kaara L. Peterson. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004.
- "Performing Arts: Hysterical Disease, Exorcism, and Shakespeare's Theater." Disease, Diagnosis, and Cure on the Early Modern Stage. 3-30.
- "Framing Ophelia: Representation and the Pictorial Tradition." Mosaic: A Journal for the 兔子先生 Study of Literature 31.3 (September 1998): 1-24. Reprinted in Shakespearean Criticism Yearbook 1998. A Selection of the Year's Most Noteworthy Studies of William Shakespeare's Plays and Poetry 48. Detroit: Gale Group, 2000.
- Theater reviews, Boston-area productions, Cahiers Élisabéthains: A Biannual Journal of English Renaissance Studies
Grants and Awards
- Burghley Fellow, Cambridge University, St. John's College (2024)
- Plumer Visiting Research Fellow and Visiting Fellow, Centre for Early Modern Studies, Oxford University (Spring 2019)
- Research Grant, The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London, UK (2016)
- Fellow, Countway Library of Medicine, Center for the History of Medicine, Harvard University (Spring 2013)
- Visiting Fellow, Joan Nordell Visiting Fellowship, Houghton Library, Harvard University (Fall 2006)
- Summer Seminar Fellowship, National Endowment for the Humanities, "Literature and the Visual Arts," Richard Wendorf, director, Summer Seminar (2004)
Work in Progress
Professor Peterson is currently working on a new project about the construction of virginity in the age of Elizabethan art, medicine, and culture, in addition to compiling the comprehensive volume Ophelia: A Visual-Cultural History.
She is also working on a creative non-fictional/cultural history of 70s-80s New York.