By Arpeni Mael, Editor-in-Chief
UMass Dartmouth’s College of Arts and Sciences will welcome Coppélia Kahn to deliver a public lecture on April 3 at 4 p.m. at the Charlton College of Business as part of the university’s National Poetry Month celebration.
Professor Kahn is an internationally recognized Shakespeare scholar and Professor Emerita of English and Gender Studies at Brown University. She will be speaking on “The Feud as Fate in Romeo and Juliet.” After the lecture, there will be a reception in the business school’s newly renovated lobby.
Kahn was one of the first to introduce the question of gender into Shakespeare studies. Since then, she has published several books including Man’s Estate: Masculine Identity in Shakespeare and Roman Shakespeare: Warriors, Wounds, and Women.
Furthermore, she has co-edited six collections of essays and published nearly 30 peer-reviewed articles and essays. While her work focuses on the famously known Shakespeare’s plays and poems as well as questions of race and nation in 20th century constructions of his work, she also incorporated gender theory, Sigmund Freud, and Jacobean drama.
She earned her bachelor’s degree from Barnard College in 1961, and her master’s and PhD degree from the University of California, Berkeley. Then in 2010, she was the President of the Shakespeare Association of America.
The Academy of American Poets inaugurated national Poetry Month celebration in 1996. Since then, it has become the largest literary celebration in the world with schools, publishers, libraries, booksellers, and poets coming together to celebrate.