Todd Barnes
Associate Professor of Literature
Director, Critical Reading and Writing
School of Humanities and Global Studies
Ramapo College of New Jersey
505 Ramapo Valley Road
Mahwah, NJ 07430
Associate Professor of Literature
Director, Critical Reading and Writing
School of Humanities and Global Studies
Ramapo College of New Jersey
505 Ramapo Valley Road
Mahwah, NJ 07430
EDUCATION
● Ph.D. in Rhetoric, University of California at Berkeley, 2010, Designated Emphasis in Film Studies; Dissertation: Immanent Shakespearing: Politics, Performance, Pedagogy; Committee: Shannon Jackson (chair), W.B. Worthen, Linda Williams, Peter Glazer
● M.A. in Rhetoric, University of California at Berkeley, 2004
● B.A. in English (Education minor), University of California at Berkeley, 2000 Summa cum laude; Honors Thesis Advisors: Sharon Marcus & Pedro Noguera
BOOKS
● Shakespearean Charity and the Perils of Redemptive Performance. Cambridge University Press, 2020
ARTICLES & REVIEWS
● “Aesthetic Borderlands in Peter Greenaway’s Prospero’s Books,” Symbolism: An International Annual of Critical Aesthetics, Special Issue: “Beyond Mind,” edited by Natasha Lushetich, Vol. 19, 2019 (refereed journal)
● “‘Nature’s Journeymen’: Cultivating Political Desires in New York City’s Shakespeare Gardens,” in Enchanted, Stereotyped Civilized: Garden Narratives in Literature, Art, and Film, edited by Sabine Planka and Feryal Cubukcu. Würzburg, Germany: Königshausen & Neumann, 2018
● “Review: Pleasing Everyone: Mass Entertainment in Renaissance London and Golden-Age Hollywood, by Jeffrey Knapp, Oxford University Press, 2017” for Renaissance Quarterly 71:1 (Spring 2018), edited by Sarah Covington. University of Chicago Press (refereed journal)
● “Macbeth’s ‘Strange Garments’: Borrowing Africa’s Robes,” Guide to the Season’s Plays: 2016-2017. Shakespeare Theatre Company. 2016. An excerpt of this essay appeared in Asides, the playbill for Macbeth, directed by Liesl Tommy, whose recent Broadway production of Eclipsed was nominated for six Tony awards; it was also the first Broadway production to have an all-
female cast, director, and playwright.
● "Shakespeare in 2016," Public Books, May 1, 2016. Public Books is an online multimedia site affiliated with the print journal Public Culture (Duke University Press). Public Books is an initiative of the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University.
● “Striking Our Debt to Moral Tragedy: Retributive Economics in Julius Caesar,” in Julius Caesar: A Critical Reader. Ed. Andrew J. Hartley. Arden Early Modern Drama Guides, New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016
● “The Tempest’s ‘Standing Water’: Recycling Early Modern Cosmographies in Lost," in Shakespearean Echoes. Eds. Kevin J. Wetmore Jr. and Adam Hansen, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015
● "Hamlet on the Potomac: Anti-Intellectualism in American Political Discourse Before and After ‘the Decider’," in Hamlet Handbook: Subject Matter, Adaptations, Interpretations (Hamlet Handbuch: Stoffe, Aneignungen, Deutungen). Ed. Peter W. Marx
Stuttgart/Weimar: Verlag J.B. Metzler, 2014
● “The African-American Shakespeare’s Macbeth Project,” Shakespeare Bulletin Special Issue: African-American Shakespeares, ed.
Ayanna Thompson. 27.3 (Fall 2009) Washington: Johns Hopkins University Press, 462-468
● “Hip Hop Macbeths, “Digitized Blackness,” and the Millennial Minstrel: Illegal Culture Sharing in the Virtual Classroom” in
Weyward Macbeth: Intersections of Race and Performance. Eds. Ayanna Thompson and Scott Newstok, New York: Palgrave, 2009
● “George W. Bush’s ‘Three Shakespeares’: Macbeth, Macbush, and the Theater of War,” Shakespeare Bulletin 26.3 (Fall 2008)
Washington: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1-29 (refereed journal)
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS & INVITED LECTURES
● "The White Christian Shakespeare Complex," Paper circulated as part of the seminar "Shakespeare the Documentary" at the 47th annual meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America in Washington, D.C., April 20, 2019.
● "Cultural MMT: Neochartalism and the Humanities," Respondent, The Second International Conference of Monetary Theory: Public Money, Public Purse, Public Power, The New School for Social Research, New York City, September 29, 2018.
● “Karaoke as Historiography: Richard Burton's 'Ghost Tape' and the Wooster Group's Hamlet,” Presented at Heritage College’s conference, “401 years after Shakespeare: Shifting Paradigms from the Shakespearean Human to the Post-human,” sponsored by the Shakespeare Society of Eastern India. Kolkata, India, November 25, 2017.
● “Striking Our Debt to Moral Tragedy,” Presented at the London Conference in Critical Thought, Birkbeck, University of London, June 24, 2016.
● “‘Nature’s Journeymen’: Cultivating Shakespeare’s Gardens,” an invited lecture delivered to the Central Park Conservancy, at the Central Park Conservancy, New York City, June 20, 2016.
● Moderator, post-show discussion with the cast of Twelfth Night, Filter Theatre/Royal Shakespeare Company, New York University, Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, February 19, 2016.
● “The White Christian Shakespeare Complex: or, Why Neoliberal Redemption Dramas are an Emotional Drain,” Presented at the London Conference in Critical Thought, University College, London, June 26-7, 2015
● “The White Christian Shakespeare Complex: or, Why Neoliberal Redemption Dramas are an Emotional Drain,” Presented at the “Living Labor: Marxism and Performance Studies Conference,” Department of Performance Studies, New York University, April 11-13, 2014
● “Foucault, Nietzsche, and Media Archeology,” Invited Seminar Session, SUNY Stony Brook, Graduate Program in Cultural Analysis and Theory, February 19, 2014
● “Barack Obama’s ‘Hamlet-like Indecision’” Paper circulated to the Shakespearean Performance Research Group Seminar at the American Society of Theatre Research Conference, Dallas, Texas, November 2013
● “Barack Obama’s ‘Hamlet-like Indecision’.” Rutgers English Department Medieval-Renaissance Colloquium,” Invited Speaker, Rutgers University-New Brunswick, New Jersey, October 2012
● “‘Dreaming of Islands’: The Insular and the Oceanic in The Tempest and Lost.” Paper circulated to the “Oceanic Shakespeares Seminar” at the 40th annual Shakespeare Association of America Conference in Boston, Massachusetts, April 2012
● “Karaoke as Historiography: Richard Burton’s “Ghost Tape” and the Wooster Group’s Hamlet.” Paper presented at the 6th annual Philadelphia Theatre Research Symposium at Villanova University, January 2012
● “Shakespeare and the ‘Book-Men’: Early Modern Books on Stage.” Paper to be circulated to the “Shakespeare and the Book Seminar” at the 39th annual Shakespeare Association of America Conference in Bellevue, Washington, April 2011
● “Michel Foucault and Michel de Certeau: Disciplinary Regimes, Spatial Practices, and Tactical Performances,” Two-Day Guest Lecture (Rhetoric 123 Taught by Shannon Jackson), University of California, Berkeley, February 16-18 2010
● “Geek Chic Shakespeare: Awkward Configurations of Love and Labor from the Bookworm to the Drama Queen,” Paper circulated for the Shakespearean Performance Research Group seminar at the American Society for Theatre Research Conference: Theatre, Performance, DestiNation, San Juan, Puerto Rico, November 2009
● “Hip Hop Macbeths, ‘Digitized Blackness’, and the Millennial Minstrel: Illegal Culture Sharing in the Virtual Classroom,” Presented as part of the “Hip-Hop Performances/Performing Hip Hop” Panel at the 2009 UC Berkeley Hip-Hop Studies Conference: “Writing and Representin’ Hip Hop in the Academy,” University of California, Berkeley, April 2009 (Conference Organizer)
● "iShakespeare: Using New Media Pedagogies to Reconfigure Time and Affect," Presented as part of the “New Media Pedagogies and Praxis” panel sponsored by the Performance Studies Focus Group at the Association for Theatre in Higher Education conference, Denver, Colorado, August 2008
● “Innervating Hamlet: Richard Burton’s Electronic Body and The Wooster Group’s Digital Stage,” Paper circulated for the “Originality and Technology Seminar” at the 36th Annual Meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America, Dallas, Texas, March 2008
● “Innervating Hamlet: Richard Burton’s Electronic Body and The Wooster Group’s Digital Stage,” Midwestern Conference on Language, Literature and Media, Northern Illinois University, March 2008
● “George W. Bush’s ‘Three Shakespeares’: Macbeth, Macbush, and the Theater of War” Department of Rhetoric/Film Studies Graduate Colloquium, UCB, May 2007
● “George W. Bush’s ‘Three Shakespeares’: Macbeth, Macbush, and the Theater of Terror.” IV World Shakespeare Conference of the Shakespeare Society of Eastern India, Loreto College, Kolkata (Calcutta), India, January 2007
● “George W. Bush’s ‘Three Shakespeares’: Macbeth, Macbush, and the Theater of Terror.” Plenary Paper at the 15th Annual California State University Shakespeare Symposium, California State University, Long Beach, November 2006
● “Building a Community of Cultural Relevancy,” The Regents of the University of California Meeting as a Committee of the Whole, UCB, October 1999
TEACHING HISTORY
Ramapo College of New Jersey
Courses Taught:
● Literature 244: Shakespeare’s Plays: Shakespeare with a Difference
● Literature 224: American Drama
● Literature 246: Shakespeare on Film
● Literature 414: Senior Seminar: The Performance of Everyday Life
● Literature 306: Literary Theory and Criticism
● Literature 203: Methods of Literary Study
● Critical Reading and Writing 102
● Critical Reading and Writing 101
University of California, Berkeley
Department of Rhetoric and Film Studies
● Rhetoric R1B: “Bookworms, Computer Nerds and Drama Queens: Rhetorics of Academic Love and Labor from the Greeks to the Geeks” (Fall 2009)
● Graduate Student Instructor, Rhetoric 103B: Approaches and Paradigms in the History of Rhetorical Theory: “Declarations and Human Rights: Nietzsche, Austin, Foucault, Freud and Derrida,” Taught under Marianne Constable (Spring 2009)
● Rhetoric R1A: “Effing the Ineffable: Exploring the Limits of Reading and Writing,” (Fall 2008)
● Rhetoric R1B: “The Craft of Writing: Authority and Argument in the Academic Voice,” team-taught with Mona Bower, (Fall 2005)
Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies
● Theatre, Dance & Performance Studies R1B: “Shakespeare’s Roman Plays: Configurations of Time, Place and Performance,” (Spring 2010)
● Theatre, Dance & Performance Studies R1B: “Reading, Writing, and Performing Shakespeare,” (Spring 2006)
● Reader, Theatre, Dance & Performance Studies 126: “Shakespeare: Performance, Theory, History,” taught by W.B. Worthen, (Spring 2005)
Department of Education
● Education 198: “Strategies for Success at Cal for Transfer Students,” (Fall 2004, Spring 2005)
Diablo Valley College (Pleasant Hill, CA)
Department of English
● English 122: “Freshman English: Reading Culture as a Text,” (Summer 2005, Fall 2005)
AWARDS AND GRANTS
● Bischoff Award for Teaching Excellence, awarded to one faculty member each year for outstanding teaching of undergraduate students
● FDF Summer Grant, Ramapo College, Summer 2015 ($5000)
● FDF Summer Grant, Ramapo College, Summer 2014 ($4800)
● SBR Summer Grant, Ramapo College, Summer 2012 ($5000)
● Speaker/Presenter, “Chivalry” Panel organized by the Women’s Center, the Psi Sigma Phi Multicultural Fraternity and the Beta Kappa Sigma Black and Latina Sorority won the Ramapo Center for Student Involvement’s “Best Educational Program of the Year” Award (March 24, 2011)
● SBR Summer Grant, Ramapo College, Summer 2011 ($4000)
● Curriculum Development Grant, Ramapo College ($2500)
● Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award, UCB, Spring 2010
● Wollenberg Grant, Department of Rhetoric, UCB, Spring 2010
● Rhetoric Departmental Block Grant, Summer 2009
● Rhetoric Departmental Block Grant, Fall 2008
● UC Berkeley Graduate Division Travel Grant, Spring 2008
● Shakespeare Association of America Travel Grant, Spring 2008
● Graduate Opportunity Program (GOP) Dissertation-Year Fellowship, UCB, 2007
● Wollenberg Grant, Department of Rhetoric, UCB, Spring 2007
● Wollenberg Grant, Department of Rhetoric, UCB, Fall 2006
● Office of the Dean’s Normative Time Fellowship, UCB, 2006
● Regent’s Graduate Fellowship, UCB, 2004
● Graduate Opportunity Fellowship, UCB, 2003-2005
● George A. Miller Scholar’s Research Grant ($7000), 1998
● UC Berkeley Alumni Scholar Leadership Award, 1998
ACADEMIC SERVICE & RELATED WORK
● Editorial board member, Cambridge University Press’ Elements: Shakespeare Performance series
● Solicited to review manuscripts for the PMLA
● Solicited to review educational materials by Cengage Learning/Wadsworth
● Solicited to review submissions to Shakespeare Bulletin: A Journal of Performance Criticism and Scholarship (Johns Hopkins University Press)
● Solicited to review syllabi at TCI: College of Technology, New York
● Research Assistant for Shannon Jackson’s Social Works: The Infrastructural Politics of Performance (Routlege, 2011)
● Dramaturg, African-American Shakespeare Company, Othello. San Francisco, CA.
● Curriculum Design for the African-American Shakespeare Company’s Othello. Designed high school curriculum to accompany the Company’s touring production
SERVICE AT RAMAPO COLLEGE OF NJ
● Program Coordinator/Director, College-wide Critical Reading and Writing Program (2013-)
● Writing & Humanities Coordinator, Education Opportunity Fund Summer Program (2014-)
● British Studies Center Advisory Board Member, (2012-)
● Writing Across the Curriculum Committee (2013-)
● General Education Committee (2013-)
● College President’s Advisory Council (2014-5)
● Honor Societies Advisory Board (2014-5)
● Search Committee for Assistant Professor of African American Literature (2018)
● Search Committee for Director for the Center for Reading and Writing, SP11, FA11, SP12
● First Year Seminar Book Selection Committee SP11, FA11, SP12, FA12
● First Year Writing/Writing Center Advisory Board 2010-present
● Newsletter Committee (FA10 – current), Current Chair
● Supervised Collaborative Research projects with ten students: Diana Atalla, Kimberly Eskin, Sarah Galo, Jonathan Henry, Amanda Lentino, Ashley Robin Netanel, Andrew Sigerson, Robert Texel, Jacqueline Thomas, Caitlin Vogel, and Michael Walsh. Lentino, Thomas and Netanel have presented their research at the COPLAC Northeast Undergraduate Research Conference at Keene University, October 2011 and Eastern /Connecticut State University, October 2012. Lentino and Thomas have also published their work in undergraduate research journals.
● Colloquium Speaker, “George W. Bush’s ‘Three Shakespeares: Macbush, Macbeth, and the Theatre of War,” October 3, 2010; &
“Barack Obama’s “Hamlet-like Indecision’,” September 28, 2011 and April 18, 2012
● Writing Pedagogy Workshop Leader, “Analysis the Evolving Thesis,” SP12, “Writing Analytically,” SP14
● Literature Club (Faculty Advisor, 2010-current)
● Film Series Presenter, SP11, FA11, SP12, FA12, SP13, FA14, SP14
● Literature Major Recruitment and Curriculum Committee, (FA11-current)
● Forum Participant, Speaker, “The Tempest’s ‘Standing Water’,” Lit. Forum, SP12
● Participant, Sponsor, Keith and Mendi Obadike’s “Student Workshop,” SP12
● Served on a “Panel on Chivalry and Gender Relations at Ramapo” organized by the Women’s Center, the Psi Sigma Phi Multicultural Fraternity and the Beta Kappa Sigma Black and Latina Sorority; won the Center for Student Involvement’s “Best Educational Program of the Year” Award (March 24, 2011).
● Organized a “Forum to Defend Public Education” (including a video conference with activists at UC Berkeley) for the Ramapo Coalition to Defend Higher Education, April 8, 2011
● Presented a “Getting into Graduate School” brown bag talk for Literature Majors, November 9, 2011
● Presented an “Occupy Wall Street” talk at the Ramapo Honors Program Brown Bag, December 8, 2011
PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS
Modern Language Association
Shakespeare Association of America
American Society for Theatre Research
Columbia University Shakespeare Seminar
Association for Theatre in Higher Education
Society for Cinema and Media Studies
Shakespeare Society of Eastern India
LANGUAGES
French (fluency)
Spanish (proficiency)
