James Rizzi

Dr. James Rizzi specializes in early modern English dramatic works with a particular focus on Shakespeare’s representations of labor. He has taught first-year writing courses as well as Writing about Literature courses with focuses on the concepts of love and family. He has also recently taught upper division courses on Shakespeare. His courses stress the importance of critical argument. 

Dr. Rizzi’s research centers on the socioeconomic changes occurring during Shakespeare’s career and how dramatic works (re)align audiences’ understanding of the importance of work to the individual and to society. Dr. Rizzi earned his doctorate from Tufts University in 2021 with a dissertation that that touches on the intersections of trauma theory, Marxist theory, and feminist theory in Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus and The Rape of Lucrece. His current research is on women’s communal spaces in the works of Thomas Heywood and John Webster. 

Awards

• Tufts University Experimental College Gittleman Teaching Fellowship
• Tufts University Graduate Institute for Teaching Fellowship

Publications

•  “Chastity and Chores in Thomas Heywood’s The Rape of Lucrece” [Forthcoming]
• “Brutalizing Shakespeare: Eliding Lucrece in Nathaniel Lee’s Lucius Junius Brutus and John Howard Payne’s Tragedy of Brutus” [Forthcoming]
•  “McInnis, David ed. Tamburlaine: A Critical Reader.” Marlowe Society Newsletter 39.1 (2021): 3-6.
•  “Fernie, Ewan. Shakespeare for Freedom.” English Studies 101.2 (2020): 251-2.
•  “Traub, Valerie. Thinking Sex with the Early Moderns.” Modern Language Studies 47.2 (Winter 2018): 86-8.