Faculty & Staff : Sharon O'Dair

Sharon O'Dair is Professor of English and the Director of the Hudson Strode Program in Renaissance Studies. She grew up in southern California in a town adjacent to Disneyland and completed her graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley.

Currently, she is working on two books, one on the profession of literary study—Elitist Equality: Class Paradoxes in the Profession of English—and the second on Shakespeare and film—The Eco-Bard: The Greening of Shakespeare in Contemporary Film

 

Books authored

Class, Critics, and Shakespeare: Bottom Lines on the Culture Wars. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000.

Read an excerpt from Amazon.com.

Books edited

The Production of English Renaissance Culture. With D. L. Miller and H. Weber. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1994.

 

Articles and Essays

“‘philosophy in a gorilla suit’: Do Shakespeareans Perform or Just Perform-a-tive?” Shakespeare Survey 60. Ed. Peter Holland. Cambridge UP, 2007. 141-153

“Marx Manqué: A Brief History of Marxist Shakespeare Criticism in North America, ca. 1980-ca. 2000.” Shakespeare Under Communisms and Socialisms. Ed. Joseph G. Price and Irena Makaryk. University of Toronto Press, 2006. 349-373.

“The Tempest as Tempest: Does Paul Mazursky ‘Green’ William Shakespeare?” Special cluster on Shakespeare and Ecocriticism. ISLE 12. 2 (Summer 2005): 165-178.

"Horror or Realism? Filming 'Toxic Discourse' in Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres." Textual Practice 19, 2 (June 2005): 263-282.

"A way of life worth preserving? Identity, Place, and Commerce in Big Business and the American South." Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation, Spring 2005.

"Class Work: Site of Egalitarian Activism or Site of Embourgeoisement?" College English 65 (July 2003): 593–606.

"Toward a Postmodern Pastoral: Another Look at the Cultural Politics of My Own Private Idaho." Journal x 7 (Autumn 2003): 25–40.

"Affiliation, Power, and Tenure in the Academy." Affiliations: Identity in Academic Culture. Ed. Jeffrey Di Leo. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003. 191–208.

"What About Me? Memoirs of an Academic Reading Academic Memoirs." The Baffler no. 15 (2002): 39–44.

"On the Value of Being a Cartoon, in Literature and in Life." Harold Bloom's Shakespeare. Ed. Christy Desmet and Robert Sawyer. New York: Palgrave, 2001. 81–96.

"Academostars are the Symptom; What's the Disease?" the minnesota review n.s. 52–54 (Fall 2001): 159–174.

"Teaching Othello in the Schoolhouse Door: History, Hollywood, Heroes." The Massachusetts Review 41 (Summer 2000): 215–236.

"Beyond Necessity: The Consumption of Class, the Production of Status, and the Persistence of Inequality." New Literary History 31 (Spring 2000): 337–354.

"The Status of Class in Shakespeare; or Why Critics Love to Hate Capitalism," Discontinuities: New Essays on Renaissance Literature and Criticism, Ed. Viviana Comensoli and Paul Stevens. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998. 201–223.

"Stars, Tenure, and the Death of Ambition." Michigan Quarterly Review 36 (Fall 1997): 607–627. Rpt. in Day Late, Dollar Short: The Next Generation and the New Academy Ed. Peter C. Herman. Albany: SUNY Press, 2000. 45–61.

"What's the Matter with Ending Well?" Dallas Theater Center 1996-97 Season 6 (March 1997): 19–21.

"Class Matters: Symbolic Boundaries and Cultural Exclusion." This Fine Place So Far From Home. Ed. L. L. Barney Dews & Carolyn Leste Law. Philadelphia: Temple U P, 1995. 200–08. Rpt. in States of Rage. Ed. Allison and Curry. New York: New York U P, 1996. 219-29.

"Still No Respect: Capitalism and the Cultural Choices of the Working-Class. Sympok纯em> 2 (Summer 1994): 159–76.

"Social Role and the Making of Identity in Julius Caesar." SEL 33 (1993): 289-307. Rpt. in Shakespearean Criticism . Ed. Joseph Tardiff. Detroit: Gale Research, 1994. 153–62.

"Theorizing as Defeatism: A Pragmatic Defense of Agency." Mosaic 26 (Spring 1993): 111–21.

"Vestments and Vested Interests: Academia, the Working Class, and Affirmative Action." Working-Class Women in the Academy. Ed. Tokarczyk and Fay. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1993. 239–50.

"Freeloading Off the Social Sciences." Philosophy and Literature 15 (1991): 260–67.

"Justifying Subsidizing; or Literature and Social Process." The Centennial Review 34.4 (Fall 1990): 595–603.

"'The Contentless Passion of an Unfruitful Wind': Irony and Laughter in Endgame." Criticism 28.2 (Spring 1986): 165–78.

"Use-Experiences and Macromarketing Exchange Relationships in the Consumption of Theatrical Events." With Jacques M. Cadeaux. American Marketing Association Educators' Proceedings. Ed. R. W. Belk et al. Chicago: American Marketing Association, 1984. 846–49.

 

Notes

In PMLA.

 

Reviews

In Shakespeare Quarterly, The Comparatist, American Literature, South Atlantic Review.