Patricia Akhimie
Biography
Patricia Akhimie is Director of the RaceB4Race Mentoring Network and Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University-Newark, where she teaches Shakespeare Renaissance drama, and early modern women’s travel writing. She is the author of Shakespeare and the Cultivation of Race: Race and Conduct in the Early Modern World (Routledge 2018). She is co-editor, with Bernadette Andrea of Travel and Travail: Early Modern Women, English Drama, and the Wider World (University of Nebraska Press 2019). She is currently at work on a new edition of Othello for the Arden Shakespeare 4th series, a collection of essays co-edited with Mayte Green-Mercado based on the RaceB4Race Region and Enmity conference, and a monograph about race, gender, and editing early modern texts. In 2021 she received the Warren I. Susman Award for Excellence in Teaching from Rutgers University for outstanding and innovative performance in both the physical and virtual classroom. Her research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the John Carter Brown Library, and the Ford Foundation.
Awards
National Endowment for the Humanities Awards for Faculty at HSIs, "Editing Shakespeare's Othello," 2022-2023
Mellon-Funded Grant: "RaceB4Race Mentoring Network," 2021-2024
Rutgers University-Newark Mellon Humanities Leadership Program Fellowship, 2021-2022
Shakespeare Association of America Folger Shakespeare Library Fellowship, 2021-2022
Open Access Textbook Faculty Grant, Open Access Network, Rutgers University Libraries, 2021-2022
Warren I. Susman Award for Excellence in Teaching, Rutgers University, 2021
Founders' Award, Society of Senior Ford Fellows, 2021
Folger Shakespeare Library Fellowship, 2021
Chancellor's Scholar-in-Residence Fellowship, P3 Collaboratory, Rutgers University-Newark, 2020-2021
John H. Daniels Fellowship, National Sporting Library, Spring 2020-2021
Short Term Fellowship, New York Public Library, 2020-2021
Director's Award, Open and Affordable Textbook Program, Rutgers Libraries, 2020
Paul Oskar Kristeller Fellowship, Renaissance Society of America, 2020
Short Term Fellowship, Folger Shakespeare Library, 2019
University Research Council Grant, Rutgers University, 2019-2020
Open Access Textbook Faculty Grant, Open Access Network, Rutgers University Libraries, 2019-2020
National Endowment for the Humanities Long-Term Fellowship, Folger Shakespeare Library, 2018-2019
Hakluyt Society Research Grant, 2018-2019
Chancellor’s Seed Grant, “Digital Storytelling as 21st Century Pedagogy” Digital Humanities Course Series (Principal Investigator: Krista White), Rutgers Newark, 2018-2019, renewed 2019-2020
Open Access Textbook Faculty Grant, Open Access Network, Rutgers University Libraries, 2017-2018
OASIS Leadership and Professional Development Program, 2015-2016
Designing Quality Online Courses Grant, Rutgers University, 2014-2015
University Research Council Grant, Rutgers University, 2014-2015
Institute for Reserach on Women and Gender Seminar Fellowship, Rutgers University, 2014-2015
John H. Daniels Fellowship, National Sporting Library, Spring 2011
Ford Foundation Diversity Fellowship, National Research Council, 2009-2010
Grants-in-Aid, Folger Institute, Folger Shakespeare Library, Spring 2004, Fall 2004, Spring 2009
Engendering Archives Project Fellow, Center for Critical Analysis of Social Difference, 2008-2009
Helen Watson Buckner Memorial Fellowship, John Carter Brown Library, 2006
Benjamin Gilman Fellowship, Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Stratford-upon-Avon, 2006
Hopwood Award for Poetry, University of Michigan, 2002
Education
Ph.D. English, Columbia University, 2011
M.A. English, Columbia University, 2003
M.F.A. Creative Writing, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 2002
B.A. English, Princeton University, 2000
Certificates:
Inclusive and Equitable Teaching, Rutgers University, 2021
Advanced Certificate in Effective Instruction, Association of College and University Educators, 2021
Effective Online Instruction, Association of College and University Educators, 2020
Online Teaching, Rutgers University, 2019
Effective College Instruction, Association of College and University Educators, 2017
Feminist Scholarship, Columbia University, 2006
Interdisciplinary Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Columbia University, 2006
Courses Taught
GRADUATE COURSES
Introduction to Renaissance Studies: Race in the Renaissance
Gender and Sexuality in Early Modern English Literature
Drama and the Early Modern Household
Introduction to Archives and Advanced Research
UNDERGRADUATE COURSES
English Drama to 1642: Early Modern Drama
Survey of English Literature to 1700
Shakespeare: Early Works
Shakespeare: Later Works
Honors Seminar: Shakespeare and Race
Women in Literature to 1800
Race in the Renaissance
Gender and Genre in the Drama of the 1590s
Women's Travel Writing
Comics and Graphic Novels
Foundations of Literary Study
Shakespeare’s Contemporaries
The Renaissance in England: Travel Writing in England
Reinventing Literary History: Women & Culture I: Antiquity to 1700
Reinventing Literary History: Women & Culture II: 1700 to Present
Writing the Research Proposal
ONLINE COURSES
Comics and Graphic Novels
Foundations of Literary Study
Shakespeare: Later Works
Shakespeare: Early Works
Survey of English Literature to 1700
Publications
BOOKS
Shakespeare and the Cultivation of Difference: Race and Conduct in the Early Modern World. (Routledge 2018)
Travel and Travail: Early Modern Women, English Drama, and the Wider World. Eds. Patricia Akhimie and Bernadette Andrea. (University of Nebraska Press 2019)
Leaving Home: Early Modern Women's Travel (in progress)
Othello (Arden Shakespeare, in progress)
ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS
"Cultivating Expertise: Glossing Shakespeare and Race" and "Teaching Guide for 'Cultivating Expertise'" in "Race Before Race: Premodern Critical Race Studies," ed. Ayanna Thompson, special issue Literature Compass 18.10 (Oct 2021).
"Racist Humor and Shakespearean Comedy" The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race. Ed. Ayanna Thompson. Cambridge UP, 2021
"Performance in the Periphery: Colonial Encounters and Entertainments" Acoustemologies in Contact: Sounding Subjects and Modes of Listening in Early Modernity. Open Book Publishers, Cambridge, UK, 2021
"Pinching Caliban: Race, Husbandry, and the Working Body in The Tempest," in Shakespeare / Sense. Arden Shakespeare Critical Intersections. Ed. Simon Smith. Bloomsbury / Arden Shakespeare, 2020.
"'Qualities of Breeding': Race, Class, and Conduct in The Merchant of Venice," in The Merchant of Venice: The State of Play. Ed. M. Lindsay Kaplan. Bloomsbury / Arden Shakespeare, 2020.
"'Fair' Bianca and 'Brown' Kate: Shakespeare and the Mixed-Race Family in Jose Esquea's The Taming of the Shrew," in "Shakespeare and Black America" Eds. Patricia Cahill and Kim F. Hall, special issue Journal of American Studies 54 (2020): 89-96
"The Work of Gender in Early Modern Travel Treatises: Richard Lassels’s ‘The Voyage of the Lady Catherine Whetnall from Brussells into Italy’ (1650)," Travel and Travail: Early Modern Women, English Drama, and the Wider World. Eds. Patricia Akhimie and Bernadette Andrea. University of Nebraska Press (forthcoming 2018)
"Galleries and Soft Power: The Gallery in The Winter's Tale." Early Modern Diplomacy, Theatre and Soft Power: The Making of Peace. Ed. Nathalie Rivere de Carles. Palgrave, 2016
"'Bruised with Adversity: Reading Race in The Comedy of Errors." The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Embodiment: Gender, Sexuality, Race. Ed. Valerie Traub. Oxford University Press, 2016
“Strange Episodes: Race in Stage History.” Shakespeare, Race and Performance. Spec. issue of Shakespeare Bulletin 27.3 (Fall 2009): 363-76
“Travel, Drama, and Domesticity: Staging Huswifery in Fletcher and Massinger's The Sea Voyage.” Early Modern Travel Writing. Spec. issue of Studies in Travel Writing. 13.2 (June 2009): 153-66
COURSE MATERIALS AND CURRICULUM DESIGN
"Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Othello's Story," Black Shakespeare, 9th-12th Grades, Reconstruction, Inc.