English BA/MA students present papers in Spain

Alfredo Alvarez and Victoria Bustamante, both students in the English BA/MA program, presented papers on Shakespeare to the SEDERI (the Spanish and Portuguese Society for English Renaissance Studies) International Conference for Junior Researchers of Early Modern English Studies in October at the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM) in Spain. They were two of only three American students and the only undergraduates selected. Alfredo’s paper, “’My face I’ll grime with filth’: Revealing Whiteness in King Lear,” reads Shakespeare through the lens of Critical Race Theory; Victoria’s “‘Villain am I none’: The Self and the Other in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet” offers a mainly Levinasian reading of tragedy, identity, and difference in that play. Both papers began as projects in Professor Naomi Liebler’s graduate course on Theoretical Approaches to Literature. Their attendance at the conference was supported by travel grants from CHSS Dean Peter Kingstone and English Department chair Jonathan Greenberg.