Ann Christensen
Associate Professor
- Phone: (713) 743-2948
- Email: achrist@uh.edu
- Office: 223-A Roy Cullen Building
Ann Christensen teaches and writes in the field of early modern studies. She is working on a book, Business and Pleasure: Domesticity and Capitalism in Early Modern England, a study of sixteenth - and seventeenth century representations of housework and paid labor in the context of nascent capitalism. Her published articles concern drama by Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton, and Heywood as well as Jonson's poetry and film adaptations of The Taming of the Shrew. These essays, along with book reviews, can be found in SEL, Exemplaria, Shakespeare Quarterly, Modern Philology, Comparative Drama, Literature & History (special issues on Historicizing Shakespeare), and Postscript (a special issue on Shakespeare and film). A recipient of an NEH research grant, she has also received the Distinguished Teacher Award of the College of Humanities, Fine Arts, and Communication.
Education
- Ph.D., University of Illinois
- M.A., University of Illinois
- B.A., Quincy College
Honors, Awards, and Grants Received
- Master Teacher Award. College of Humanities, Fine Arts, and Communication, University of Houston. 1996.
- Outstanding Professor. Sigma Tau Delta (English Honors Society), University of Houston. 1995.
- NEH Grant. Folger Shakespeare Library Institute: "Shakespeare and the Languages of Performance," Folger Library, Washington, D.C. 1992-1993.
Selected Publications
- “Reinventing the Domestic Woman: Petruchio's House in Postwar Suburbia." Post Script: Essays in Film and the Humanities Special Issue on Shakespeare and film. 17.1 (Fall 1997): 28-42.
- "The Return of the Domestic in Coriolanus." SEL, Studies in English Literature 1500-1800. 37.2 (Spring 1997): 295-316.
- Reprinted in 1997 Yearbook of Shakespearean Criticism. Michelle Lee, editor. Gale Research.
- "Business, Pleasure and Household Management in Heywood's A Woman Killed with Kindness." Exemplaria: A Journal of Theory in Medieval and Renaissance Studies. 9.2 (October 1997): 315-40.
- "Of Household Stuff and Homes: The Stage and Social Practice in The Taming of the Shrew." Explorations in Renaissance Culture. 22 (Fall 1996): 127-145.
- "'Because their business still lies out of doors': Resisting the Separation of the Spheres in The Comedy of Errors." Literature & History (Special issue, "Historicizing Shakespeare") 5.1 (Spring 1996): 19-37.
- "Reconsidering Ben Jonson and the Centered Self." South Central Review 13.1 (Spring 1996): 1-17.
- "Playing the Cook: Nurturing Men in Titus Andronicus." Shakespeare and History, Publication of Shakespeare Yearbook. 6 (Spring 1996): 327-354.
- "Settling House in Middleton's Women Beware Women." Comparative Drama 29 (1995-96): 493-518.
- *"'The Doors are Made Against You': Domestic Thresholds in Jonson's Plays." Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association. 16 (1995): 153-178.
Invited Lectures
- Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Southern Oregon State University, “The Domestic Worlds of Romeo and Juliet” Ashland Shakespeare Festival Symposium, May 2003. Panelist with Stephen Booth (University of California, Berkeley and Michael Warren (University of California, Santa Cruz).
- University of Texas at Austin. "’Let Housewifery Appear’: Finding the Housewife in Early Modern Studies,” March 2001.
Teaching
Graduate Courses
- English 7363 Graduate Pre-seminar Renaissance Literature
- English 7396, (City Initiative) Approaches to Shakespeare on Film
- English 7398 Ph.D. Student Independent Study. "Gender and Power in Shakespeare's Problem Plays"; MFA student Independent Study: "The History of Sonnet Sequences," “Shakespeare and Globalization”
- English 8340 "City, State, and Household on the Elizabethan and Jacobean Stage"; “Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama and the New Historicism,” “Labor and Leisure”; “Economies”
- English 8341 Shakespeare's Comedies and Histories, "Gender and/as Performance"
Undergraduate Courses
- English 1303 Freshman Composition
- English 2302 and 2101, Freshman Honors, The Human Situation
- English 2304 Introduction to Poetry
- English 3305, English Renaissance Literature
- English 3306, Shakespeare's Major Works: Shakespeare and Film, "The Family, Sex and Households on the Shakespearean Stage"; "Shakespeare and the Spaces of Performance"; "Reading, Viewing, Reviewing and Doing Shakespeare"; "Imagining Other Worlds: Shakespeare and the Age of Discovery"; "Cultural Contexts for Identity in Shakespeare"
- English 3309, Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama: "Drama and Social History"; "Carnival and Marketplace in Early Modern Drama"
- English 4396, Senior Seminar “Shakespeare and the Place of the Stage”
- English 4398 Undergraduate Independent Study. "The Shakespearean History Play."
