Alexander C.Y. Huang Joins English Department

Prof. Alexander Huang, an expert on Shakespeare in Asia, voguing Hamlet-style.

The English Department is thrilled to announce that Prof. Alexander C.Y. Huang, previously of Penn State University, will be joining the English department this fall as Associate Professor.

Prof. Huang, who was educated in Taiwan and received his PhD from Stanford, is an internationally recognized expert on Shakespeare in Asia, Shakespeare and performance, and digital humanities. His monograph, Chinese Shakespeares: Two Centuries of Cultural Exchange (Columbia University Press, 2009) won the 2010 MLA Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literature. He is also editor, with Charles Ross, of Shakespeare in Hollywood, Asia, and Cyberspace (Purdue University Press, 2009) and co-founder of Global Shakespeares, an open-access digital video archive of Shakespeare performances. He was recently appointed General Editor of Shakespearean International Yearbook, the international journal of record on Shakespeare.

The recipient of two Penn State teaching awards, Prof. Huang will teach and advise undergraduates and graduate students at GW. His recent areas of teaching interests include early modern English drama, Shakespeare, intercultural performance, film studies, race and gender identities, Orientalism, modern Asian and Asian American drama, and global literary theory. In fall 2011, he will be teaching two undergraduate courses on Shakespeare.

Prof. Huang's appointment strengthens an already extraordinarily strong cohort of medieval and early modern studies scholars in the English department, including Profs. Jeffrey Cohen, Patrick Cook (who recently published Cinematic Hamlet with the Ohio State University Press), Holly Dugan (whose book The Ephemeral History of Perfume: Scent and Sense in Early Modern England is forthcoming from Johns Hopkins University Press), Jonathan Gil Harris, and Jonathan Hsy.