Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, the Ronni Lacroute Chair in Shakespeare Studies at Linfield College, will present the keynote address at opening convocation on Friday, Aug. 25, at 9:30 a.m. in the Ted Wilson Gymnasium at Linfield College. The talk is entitled “Digital Shakespeare.”
Pollack-Pelzner joined the Linfield faculty in 2010. His research explores Shakespeare adaptations: how writers transform Shakespeare’s model into literary forms that speak to their own cultural moment—and shape what we mean by “Shakespeare” today.
His articles on Shakespeare and contemporary culture have appeared recently in The New Yorker, Slate, Public Books, and The New York Times. He has written about a production at the Royal Shakespeare Company that uses digital technology to represent Shakespeare’s stage magic, a new edition of Shakespeare’s work that employs computer methods to determine the plays’ authorship, and the role of Shakespeare quotations in the HBO series Westworld.
An Oregon native, Pollack-Pelzner lectures frequently at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and is the scholar-in-residence at the Portland Shakespeare Project, as well as a consulting scholar for Age and Gender Equity in the Arts. He is also a member of the faculty at the University of California Dickens Project and is the Shakespeare Scholar for the Oregon Psychiatric Physicians Association. At Linfield, he offers classes on Shakespeare, British literary history, and contemporary drama. He is the recipient of a Graves Award for outstanding teaching in the humanities.
The lecture is free and open to the public. Convocation is the traditional ceremony that celebrates the beginning of the new academic year. Faculty dress in academic regalia and new faculty members are introduced to the Linfield community. Classes at Linfield will begin Monday, Aug. 28.
