Robert D . Stefanek

United States Air Force Academy, English, Faculty Member

Followers

Following

Public Views

Dr. Robert Stefanek’s research focuses on the social and political functions of early modern English drama in its historical conditions of performance. His research interests include hegemony, nationalism, posthumanism, historical phenomenology, and early modern theories of race, gender, and sexuality. He is currently working on two book-length projects. The first, The Space of Playing: Architecture, Audiences, and the Creation of Meaning in the Works of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, is an innovative effort to theorize how locality, theatre architectures, audiences, and staging shape the meaning plays. The second, Coriolanus and the Death of the Human, is an intervention in our understanding of early modern humanism, particularly in the areas of the bounded self, gender, and representative politics.

Robert completed his Ph.D. at the University of Southern California before moving to Colorado. Before coming to the Air Force Academy, he previously was at Colorado College, where he taught a wide range of courses in Shakespeare, medieval and early modern literature, poetry, and race/ethnicity and gender studies. He is originally from the Detroit area.

less

Interests

Uploads

Papers by Robert D . Stefanek

Curriculum Vitae

Download

A Theatre of Students and Spies: The University Performances of the Parnassus Plays and Hamlet

Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, 2020

Students and spying fill Hamlet and the Parnassus plays, both written between 1598 and 1602, a pe... more Students and spying fill Hamlet and the Parnassus plays, both written between 1598 and 1602, a period of intense anxiety about the universities that spawned efforts to observe and control students. Drama was an integral part of university education that allowed students to rehearse their future roles in the Reformed state, but also taught tactics useful for evading observation and in a variety of socially-marginal occupations. This illuminates why the students in these plays are constantly staging scenes to spy on others or performing to elude those who wish to observe their own inner thoughts.

"A neighbour, hedges haue eyes, and high-wayes haue eares" Traveling Players, Traveling Spies in 1 Henry IV and The True Tragedie of Richard the Third

Quidditas: The Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association, 2012

The Elizabethan government used companies of travelling players to serve a number of intelligence... more The Elizabethan government used companies of travelling players to serve a number of intelligence functions, which extended to the surveillance of audiences during performances. This surveillance was facilitated by the discursive instabilities of their plays and the architecture of the spaces in which they were performed. Surveillance by travelling players was part of an essentially colonial project in which the crown sought to extend its power and increase its visibility while attempting to fashion a nationalist, pro-Protestant, pro-Tudor identity in the provinces. To consider these dynamics, this article considers two conjectured performances. First, Shakespeare’s 1 Henry IV performed by the Chamberlain’s Men at the New Hall in Norwich, which was the center of a socially, religiously, and economically divided region. Harry and his band’s surveillance of commoners in order to exploit “their Saint the Common-wealth” exposes the status of these fissures to the view of the Chamberlain’s Men. Second, The True Tragedie of Richard the Third performed by the Queen’s Men at the Common Hall in York, a recusant bastion historically friendly to Richard. While the play represents Richard as a spying villain, it also offers a subversive counternarrative of Richard through his Page that facilitates observation of the audience.

Download

Curriculum Vitae

Download

A Theatre of Students and Spies: The University Performances of the Parnassus Plays and Hamlet

Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, 2020

"A neighbour, hedges haue eyes, and high-wayes haue eares" Traveling Players, Traveling Spies in 1 Henry IV and The True Tragedie of Richard the Third

Quidditas: The Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association, 2012

Download

Robert D . Stefanek

Uploads

Papers by Robert D . Stefanek

Log In