Douglas Lanier is Professor of English at the University of New Hampshire. After completing a double major in English and Humanities at Stetson University, he did his graduate work at Duke University, where he was trained as a medieval and early modern drama specialist. He has taught at Duke, UCLA, Allegheny College, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, The University of Milan, and Universidad de Murcia in Spain, as well as the University of New Hampshire. He serves on the editorial board of Adaptation, Shakespeare Quarterly, and Shakespeare, and is a past trustee of the Shakespeare Association of America and a present trustee of the Association of Adaptation Studies. He has been the recipient of fellowships at the Folger Shakespeare Library and the New Hampshire Center for the Humanities. In 2009 he received the Gary Lindberg Award, the University of New Hampshire's highest recognition for distinction in teaching and scholarship in the liberal arts. For 2016-7, he served as the Fulbright Global Shakespeare Centre Distinguished Chair at Queen Mary University of London and the University of Warwick; in 2018-9, he served as a long-term research fellow at the Folger Shakespeare Library.
Professor Lanier is widely recognized as a pioneer in the study of modern appropriations of Shakespeare in all media. His book, Shakespeare and Modern Popular Culture (Oxford University Press, 2002), established the basic parameters of one of the liveliest fields in Shakespeare studies today. He followed up this work with an annotated catalogue of more than 900 Shakespeare spinoff films for Shakespeares after Shakespeare, ed. Richard Burt (Greenwood Press, 2005), a series of essays on Shakespearean appropriations of specific plays for the Sourcebooks Shakespeare editions, and contributions to The Cambridge World Shakespeare Encyclopedia. He has published widely on Renaissance authors (Shakespeare, Milton, Marston, Jonson) as well as on adaptation of Shakespeare worldwide in more than sixty articles in journals and collections, and he has recently completed two books, an edition of Timon of Athens for the New Kittredge series, and a monograph on The Merchant of Venice for the Arden Language & Writing Series. He is currently at work on two book projects, a study of the adaptation of Othello to the screen worldwide, and a book on reparative Shakespeare, productions of Shakespeare addressed to the traumas of socially-marginalized groups.
Courses Taught
- ENGL 401H: Honors/First-Year Writing
- ENGL 419: How to Read Anything
- ENGL 513W: BritLitII: Shakespeare-Austen
- ENGL 657: Shakespeare
- ENGL 758/897: Advanced Shakespeare
- ENGL 780: Drama Shakespeare's Contemp
- ENGL 782: Modern and Contemporary Drama
- ENGL 782/897: Modern and Contemporary Drama
- ENGL 787/897: English Major Seminar
- ENGL 958: Sem/Study in Shakespeare
Research Interests
- Early English drama
- English Language/Literature
- Film
- Literary Criticism
- Literary History
- Performance studies
- Performing Arts
- Renaissance literature
- Shakespeare
- Theatre history
Selected Publications
Shakespeare, W. (2019). Shakespeare, William. Timon of Athens. New Kittredge Shakespeare. Hackett Publishing, 2019.. D. Lanier (Ed.), Hackett Publishing.
Lanier, D. (2018). "Shakespearean Comedy on Film." In The Oxford Handbook of Shakespearean Comedy. Ed. Heather Hirschfield. Oxford University Press, 2018. 470-86.. In The Oxford Handbook of Shakespearean Comedy. (pp. 470-486). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lanier, D. (2017). "'We will answer all faithfully': Afterword." In Shakespeare / Not Shakespeare. Ed. Christy Desmet, Jim Casey, and Nathalie Loper. Palgrave, 2017. 293-306.. In Shakespeare / Not Shakespeare. (pp. 293-306). New York City: Palgrave.
Lanier, D. (2014). "Shakespearean Rhizomatics: Adaptation, Ethics, Value." In Shakespeare and the Ethics of Appropriation. Ed. Alexander Huang and Elizabeth Rivlin. New York: Palgrave, 2014. 21-40.. In Shakespeare and the Ethics of Appropriation (pp. 21-40). Palgrave.
Lanier, D. (2014). "'Good lord, for alliance': Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing." Représentations: La revue électronique du CEMRA. Special issue, "Shakespeare aux États-Unis: les paradoxes de l’héritage." Eds. Vincent Broqua and Ronan Ludot Vlasak. 2014:1. Available at http://representations.u-grenoble3.fr/.. Représentations: La revue électronique du CEMRA., 2014.1. Retrieved from http://representations.u-grenoble3.fr/
Lanier, D. M. (2012). 'I'll Teach You Differences': Genre Literacy, Critical Pedagogy, and Screen Shakespeare. In Shakespeare and Genre: From Early Modern Inheritances to Postmodern Legacies (pp. 259-287). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan (London).
Lanier, D. (2007). "Shakespeare™: Author and Myth." In The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Popular Culture. Ed. Robert Shaughnessy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 60-74.. In R. Shaughnessy (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Popular Culture (pp. 60-74). Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press.
Lanier, D. (2007). "Shakespeare on the Record." In The Blackwell Companion to Shakespeare and Performance. Eds. Barbara Hodgdon and William Worthen. New York: Blackwell Press, 2006. 415-436.. In W. Worthen, & B. Hodgdon (Eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Shakespeare and Performance (pp. 415-436). London: Blackwell.
Lanier, D. (n.d.). "Minstrelsy / Jazz / Rap: Shakespearean Legitimation and African-American Culture." Borrowers and Lenders: An Electronic Journal of Shakespearean Appropriation. Fall 2005. At http://atropos.english.uga.edu/cocoon/borrowers.. Borrowers and Lenders: An Electronic Journal of Shakespearean Appropriation, 1(1). Retrieved from http://www.borrowers.uga.edu/archive
Lanier, D. (2002). Shakespeare and Modern Popular Culture. Oxford University Press, USA.
Lanier, D. (1995). "'Unmarkt, Unknown': The Return of the Expressed in Paradise Regained." Criticism 37.2 (Spring 1995): 187-212.. Criticism, 37(2), 187-212.
Lanier, D. (n.d.). "Shakespeare's Language and Popular Culture." In The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare's Language. Eds. Lynne Magnusson and David Schalkwyk. Oxford University Press.. In L. Magnusson, & D. Schalkwyk (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare's Language. Oxford UK: Oxford University Press.