Daniel Vitkus

Rebeca Hickel Endowed Chair in Elizabethan Literature

Daniel Vitkus earned his Master’s Degree in English Language and Literature at Oxford University (Hertford College) and his Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He holds the Rebeca Hickel Endowed Chair in Elizabethan Literature at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Turning Turk: English Theater and the Multicultural Mediterranean, 1570-1630 (Palgrave Macmillan) and of numerous articles and book chapters on the literature and cultural history of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Vitkus has edited Three Turk Plays from Early Modern England (Columbia University Press) and Piracy, Slavery and Redemption: Barbary Captivity Narratives from Early Modern England (Columbia University Press). His latest book, co-authored with Jyotsna Singh, is called A Contextual Guide to Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra (forthcoming with Edinburgh University Press in 2025). His interests include Shakespeare, Renaissance literature, travel writing, Islamic culture and its representation in the West, the origins of capitalism, the cultural history of empire, eco-criticism, historical materialism, cultural studies, and literary and critical theory.

Languages: English, French

Books

• Critical edition of William Shakespeare’s Othello. Barnes & Noble, 2007. 408 pp.
• Turning Turk: English Theater and the Multicultural Mediterranean, 1570-1630 (Palgrave, 2003) 244 pp.  LINK
• Piracy, Slavery, and Redemption: Barbary Captivity Narratives from Early Modern England, selected and edited by Daniel Vitkus; general introduction by Nabil Matar (Columbia University Press, 2001) 376 pp.
• Three Turk Plays from Early Modern England: Selimus, Emperor of the Turks; A Christian Turned Turk; and The Renegado (Columbia University Press, 2000) 358 pp.

Articles & Book Chapters

• "Decolonizing Early Modern Travel Studies: Racial Capitalism, Intersectionality, and Solidarity," in in Decolonizing Travel Studies, Hakluyt Society Studies in the History of Travel, ed. Natalya Din-Kariuki and Guido van Meersbergen (forthcoming, Routledge, 2024).
• “Red-Green Intersectionality beyond the New Materialism: An Eco-Socialist Approach to Shakespeare’s The Tempest” in Intersectionalities of Class in Early Modern English Literature, ed. Ronda Arab and Laurie Ellinghausen (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023).  LINK
• “The Perverse Eco-Politics of Object-Oriented Criticism: Money, Magical Thinking, and the New Materialism” in Money and Magic in Early Modern Drama, ed. David Hawkes, Bloomsbury, 2023, pp. 17-36.  LINK
• “’All the Kingdoms of the World’: Global Visions of Empire and War in Milton’s Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained” in 1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era, vol. 27, special issue on “Worldmaking and Other Worlds: Restoration to Romantic,” ed. Elizabeth Sauer and Betty Joseph (Bucknell University Press, 2022), pp. 37-54.
• “Radical Neo-Paganism: The Transmission of Discontinuous Identity from Plutarch to Montaigne to Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra” in Shakespeare and Montaigne. Ed. Lars Engel, Patrick Gray, and William Hamlin. (Edinburgh University Press, 2021), pp. 246-62.
• “Othello, Islam, and the Noble Moor: Spiritual Identity and the Performance of Blackness on the Early Modern Stage” in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Religion. Ed. Hannibal Hamlin. (Cambridge University Press, 2019), pp. 218-33.  LINK
• “How the 1% Came to Rule the World: Shakespeare, Long-Term Historical Narrative, and the Origins of Capitalism” in Shakespeare and the 99%: Literary Studies, The Profession, and the Production of Inequity. Ed. Sharon O’Dair and Timothy Francisco. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), pp. 161-81.  LINK
• "Unkind Dealings: English Captivity Narratives, Commercial Transformation, and the Economy of Unfree Labor in the Early Modern Period." Piracy and Captivity in the Mediterranean, 1550-1810. Ed. Mario Klarer. (Routledge, 2019), pp. 56-75.
• “Trade” in A Cultural History of Western Empires. Vol. 3 of 6. A Cultural History of Western Empires in the Renaissance (1450-1650). Ed. Ania Loomba. (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), pp. 49-76.
• “Drama and Globalization in Early Modern England.” Chapter 8 in Early Modern British Literature in Transition, 1557-1623. Ed. Kristen Poole and Lauren Shohet. (Cambridge University Press, 2019), pp. 141-60.
• "Rogue Cosmopolitans on the Early Modern Stage: John Ward, Thomas Stukeley and the Sherley Brothers" in Travel and Drama in Early Modern England: The Journeying Play. Ed. David McInnis and Claire Jowitt. (Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 128-49.
• “’People of Bad Disposition’: The Failed French Colony at Fort Caroline as a Site of Local Conflict within a Trans‐Imperial System” in Journal of Transnational American Studies 8.1 (2017): 1-15.
• “Turning Tricks: Erotic Commodification, Cross‐Cultural Conversion, and the Bed‐Trick on the English Stage, 1580‐1630.” Ed. Helen Smith and Simon Ditchfield. Conversions: Gender and Religious Change in Early Modern Europe (Manchester University Press, 2017), pp. 236-57.
• Article on “Islam” in the Cambridge Guide to the Worlds of Shakespeare. 2 vols. Ed. Bruce R. Smith. Cambridge University Press, 2016.
• “Circumnavigation, Shakespeare, and the Origins of Globalization” in Shakespeare in Our Time. Ed. Dympna Callaghan and Suzanne Gossett (Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2016), 167‐75.
• “Indicating Commodities in Early English Discovery Narratives” in The Book in History, The Book as History. Ed. Zachary Lesser, Heidi Brayman Hackel, and Jesse Lander (Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library and Yale University Press, 2016), pp. 181‐201.
• "Barbary Captivity Narratives from Early Modern England: Truth Claims and the (Re)construction of Authority." Légendes Barbaresques: Le récit de captivité: codes, stratégies, détournements (XVIe-XVIIIe siècles) [Barbary Legends: The narration of captivity: codes, strategies and appropriations (16th-18th centuries)]. Anne Duprat, ed. (Paris: Bouchène, 2016), pp. 141-54.
• “‘Consider the lamentable cry of the poor’: Foreign Parasites, English Usurers, and Economic Crisis in The Three Ladies of London” in Performance as Research in Early English Theatre Studies: The Three Ladies of London in Context. Ed. Helen Ostovich. McMaster University,2015.  LINK
• “Early Modernity and Emergent Capitalism,” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 14.1 (Winter 2014), pp. 155-161.
• "Affirmation de vérité et (re)-construction de l'autorité" ["Truth Claims and the (Re)Construction of Authority in Early Modern Captivity Narratives"] in A. Duprat (ed.), Légendes Barbaresques. Le récit de captivité: codes, stratégies, détournements (XVIe-XVIIIes). Paris: Bouchène editions, 2012.
• “The Unfulfilled Form of The Faerie Queene: Spenser's Frustrated Fore-Conceit.” Renaissance and Reformation 35.2 (Spring 2012): 83-112.
• “Mediterranean Merchandising: Chains of Exchange in The Comedy of Errors.” Programme article for Royal Shakespeare Company production of The Comedy of Errors, dir. Amir Nuzar Zuabi. Opening in Stratford-upon-Avon on 16 March 2012. This show is the second in the “What Country Friends, Is This?” season, part of the 2012 World Shakespeare Festival.
• “Richard Knolles” in The Encyclopedia of English Renaissance Literature. 3 vols. Ed. Garrett Sullivan and Alan Stewart. (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012): vol. 2, 567-69.
• “Ridding the World of a Monster: Lodge’s A Margarite of America and Cavendish’s Last Voyage.” Yearbook of English Studies 41.1 (Jan 2011): 99-112. [part of a Special Issue on “Travel and Prose Fiction in Early Modern England,” edited by Nandini Das.]
• “Labor and Travel on the Early Modern Stage: Representing the Travail of Travel in Dekker’s Old Fortunatus and Shakespeare’s Pericles” in Working Subjects in Early Modern English Drama. Ed. Michelle Dowd and Natasha Korda (Ashgate, 2011): 225-42.
• “The New Globalism: Transcultural Commerce, Global Systems Theory, and Spenser’s Mammon” in A Companion to the Global Renaissance: English Literature and Culture in the Era of Expansion. Ed. Jyotsna Singh (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), pp. 31-49.
• “’The Common Market of All the World’: English Theater, the Global System, and the Ottoman Empire in the Early Modern Period” in Global Traffic: Discourses and Practices of Trade in English Literature and Culture from 1550 to 1700. Ed. Stephen Deng and Barbara Sebek (Palgrave, 2008), pp. 19-37.
• Introduction to Thomas Middleton's Sir Robert Sherley . . . His Entertainment in Cracovia in The Collected Works of Thomas Middleton, ed. Gary Taylor, et al (Oxford University Press, 2007): 670-78. [Primary text co-edited and annotated with Jerzy Limon.]
• “Poisoned Figs, or ‘The Traveler's Religion’: Travel, Trade, and Conversion in Early Modern English Culture” in Remapping the Mediterranean World in Early Modern English Writings. Ed. Goran V. Stanivukovic. Palgrave/Macmillan, 2007. 41-57.
• “Adventuring Heroes in the Mediterranean: Mapping the Boundaries of Anglo-Islamic Exchange on the Early Modern Stage” in a special issue of The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (on “Mapping the Mediterranean,” edited by Valeria Finucci) 37.1 (winter 2007): 75-95.
• “Turks and Jews in The Jew of Malta" in Early Modern English Drama: A Critical Companion, ed. Patrick Cheney, Andrew Hadfield, and Garrett Sullivan, Jr. Oxford University Press, 2006. 61-72.
• "'Meaner Ministers': Theatrical Labor, Mastery, and Bondage in The Tempest" in The Blackwell Companion to Shakespeare's Works: The Poems, Problem Comedies and Late Plays, ed. Jean E. Howard and Richard Dutton. Blackwell, 2003. 408-26.
• "The 'O' in Othello: Tropes of Damnation and Nothingness" in New Critical Essays on 'Othello,'" ed. Philip C. Kolin. Routledge, 2001. 347-62.
• "The Circulation of Bodies: Slavery, Maritime Commerce, and English Captivity Narratives in the Early Modern Period" in Colonial and Postcolonial Incarceration, ed. Graeme Harper. Continuum, 2001. 23-37.
• "Trafficking with the Turk: English Travelers in the Ottoman Empire during the Seventeenth Century" in Travel Knowledge: European Witnesses to "Navigations, Traffiques, and Discoveries" in the Early Modern Period, ed. Jyotsna G. Singh and Ivo Kamps. St. Martin's Press, 2000. 35-52.
• "Early Modern Orientalism: Representations of Islam in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Europe," Western Views of Islam in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. D. Blanks and M. Frassetto. St. Martin's Press, 1999. 207-30.
• "Turning Turk in Othello: The Conversion and Damnation of the Moor" Shakespeare Quarterly 48: 2 (summer 1997): 145-76.
• “Madness and Misogyny in Ken Kesey’s One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, No. 14, issue topic: Madness and Civilization. (1994), pp. 64-90.

• Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University
• M.A. in English Language and Literature, Oxford University
• B.A., cum laude, University of Wisconsin