Jeffrey Knapp, Chancellor's Professor of English

Office: 401 Wheeler

Phone: 510-642-4092

Areas of Interest

English Renaissance, Drama, Poetry, Nationalism, Imperialism, Religion and Literature, Authorship, Mass Entertainment, American Film

Current Research

In my previous book Shakespeare's Tribe,I asked how Shakespeare's dramaturgy was shaped by the religious, political, and especially professional groups to which he belonged. In my new book Shakespeare Only, I ask whether Shakespeare and his contemporaries understood him to be singular, distinctive, one of a kind, and, if so, how this understanding shaped his plays. I have also begun a project on mass entertainment as a subject of early Hollywood talking pictures. The first installment was an essay on The Jazz Singer published last year in Critical Inquiry; I am currently writing on Citizen Kane.

Professional Statement

After graduate study at Berkeley, Jeffrey Knapp taught at Harvard for three years before returning to Berkeley in 1990. He chaired the Berkeley English department from 1996 to 1999 and received the campus’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 2002. He is also the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an NEH Fellowship. His Shakespeare’s Tribe (2002) won the Best Book in Literature and Language award from the Association of American Publishers, the Book of the Year award from the Conference on Christianity and Literature, and the Roland H. Bainton Prize for the Best Book in Literature from the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference. Knapp is currently a member of the editorial boards for Representations and for Literature Compass.

Selected Publications and Papers Delivered

BOOKS

Shakespeare Only. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.

Shakespeare's Tribe: Church, Nation, and Theater in Renaissance England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.

An Empire Nowhere: England, America, and Literature from Utopia to The Tempest. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.

ARTICLES

"Author, King, and Christ in Shakespeare's Histories." In Shakespeare and Religious Change. Ed. Kenneth Graham and Philip Collington. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009. 217-37.

"Shakespeare as Coauthor." Shakespeare Studies 36 (2008): 49-59.

"'Sacred Songs, Popular Prices': Secularization in The Jazz Singer." Critical Inquiry 34 (2008): 313-35.

"Religious Pluralization and Single Authorship in Shakespeare's Histories." In Representing Religious Pluralization in Early Modern Europe. Ed. Andreas Höfele et al. Berlin: Lit-Verlag, 2007. 153-73.

"Nations into Persons." In ReReading the Black Legend: The Discourses of Racism in the Renaissance Empires. Ed. Margaret R. Greer, Walter Mignolo, and Maureen Quilligan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. 293-311.

"What is a Co-Author?" Representations 89 (2005): 1-29.

“Spenser the Priest.” Representations 81 (2003): 61-78.

“Jonson, Shakespeare, and the Religion of Players.” Shakespeare Survey 54 (2001): 57-70.

“Rogue Nationalism.” In Centuries’ Ends, Narrative Means. Ed. Robert Newman. Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1996. 138-50.

“Preachers and Players in Shakespeare's England.” Representations 44 (Fall 1993): 29-59.

“Elizabethan Tobacco.” Representations 21 (Winter 1988): 26-66.

“Error as a Means of Empire in The Faerie Queene 1.” ELH 54 (Winter 1987): 801-34.

Office Hours

By appt in 401 Wheeler Hall