Marguerite Tassi

Professor

Office: THMH 101   |    Phone: (308) 865-8117   |    Email: tassim@unk.edu

Marguerite Tassi

Biography

A native of Baltimore, Maryland, Professor Marguerite A. Tassi joined the faculty at the University of Nebraska at Kearney in 1997. Prior to her current appointment, she taught for two years at Middlebury College as a Visiting Assistant Professor in Dramatic Literature. Her scholarly and teaching interests focus on Shakespeare, ancient and early modern drama, aesthetics, ethics, relationships between visual culture and verbal texts, and the literature of revenge. She has published three books: The Scandal of Images: Iconoclasm, Eroticism, and Painting in Early Modern English Drama (Susquehanna UP, 2005), Women and Revenge in Shakespeare: Gender, Genre, and Ethics (Susquehanna UP, 2011), and Poetry for Kids: William Shakespeare (MoonDance Press, 2018). Professor Tassi teaches a special course on Women and Revenge in Western Literature. She was an invited speaker at the Interacting with Eros conference at the Universite de Paul-Valery in Montpellier, France in November 2008 and the Broken Images Conference in Montpellier in November 2012. She was also an invited speaker at the Female Fury and Spirit of Masculine Vengeance Conference at the University of Bristol, UK in 2012, and gave the Nan Osmond Grass Lecture at Brigham Young University in 2013. She is co-editor with Dr. Carole Levin (UNL) of two scholarly book series, Early Modern Cultural Studies (University of Nebraska Press) and New Interdisciplinary Approaches to Early Modern Culture:Confluences and Contexts (Routledge).


Education

  • 1993 Ph. D., Claremont Graduate School
  • 1989 M. A., The University of Virginia
  • 1987 B. A.. Columbia University

Teaching Specialties

  • Shakespeare
  • Early Modern Drama
  • Elizabethan Theater Practices
  • Renaissance Lyric Poetry
  • Literature of Revenge
  • Literature and the Visual Arts
  • Literary Classics of the Western World
  • Ancient Greek Drama

Recently Published Articles and Book Chapters

  • "The Way of the Bodhisattva: A Buddhist Understanding of King Lear," Critical Survey 35.1, forthcoming.
  • "Teaching Romeo and Juliet with Cue Scripts," in Approaches to Teaching "Romeo and Juliet." Ed. Joseph M. Ortiz. Modern Languages Association, forthcoming.
  • "'Who Hath Martyred Thee?': Responding to the Broken Image of the Body in Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus," in L'Image brisée aux xvi e et xvii e siècles Breaking theImage in the Renaissance. Ed. Agnes Lafont, Christian Belin, Nicholas Myers. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2019, 119-37.
  • “Rapture and Horror: A Phenomenology of Theatrical Invisibility in Macbeth,” Explorations in Renaissance Culture 44 (2018): 1-26.
  • “The Avenging Daughter in King Lear.” Revenge and Gender in Classical, Medieval and Renaissance Literature.  Ed. Lesel Dawson and Fiona McHardy.  Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018, 111-21.
  • "Tears for Hecuba: Empathy and Maternal Bereavement in Golding’s Translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.” Scholars and Poets Talk About Queens. Ed. Carole Levin. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan Press, 2015, 7-23.
  • “Martyrdom and Memory: Elizabeth Curle’s Portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots.” The Emblematic Queen: Extra-Literary Representations of Early Modern Queenship. Ed. Debra Barrett-Graves. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2013, 101-32 .
  • “The ‘new Gorgon’: Eros, Terror, and Violence in Macbeth.” Shakespeare’s Erotic Mythology and Ovidian Renaissance Culture. Ed. Agnès Lafont. Surrey, England: Ashgate Press, 2013, 155-70.
  • “Wounded Maternity, Sharp Revenge: Shakespeare’s Representations of Queens in Light of the Hecuba Myth.” Explorations in Renaissance Culture 37.1 (summer 2011): 83-99.

Awards and Grants

  • Leland Holdt/Security Mutual Distinguished Faculty Award, UNK, 2017.
  • Pratt-Heins Award for Outstanding Teaching, UNK, 2009.
  • Mortar Board Award for Excellence in Teaching, UNK, 2009
  • NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities) Summer Grant, “Shakespeare’s Playhouses: Inside and Out,” an institute held at Staunton, VA and London, England, July 7-August 9, 2002.
  • Exceptional Performance Award, English Dept., UNK, based on outstanding performance in teaching and scholarship, 2001.
  • Mary Major Crawford Award in Shakespeare, English Dept., UNK, Shakespeare Studies, 1999, 2001.