Dr Alexander Thom

Profile

I am fascinated by Shakespeare’s poetry and drama, particularly as objects of his time encountered in our own. My critical work often returns to the importance of culture as a framework that mediates our experience of power, whether wielding it or enduring it. Like Shakespeare, I am perennially intrigued by topics like government and service, transgression and self-knowledge, exclusion and redemption. To grapple with these ideas in Shakespeare’s writing, I have often found myself drawn to: Shakespeare’s sources; other dramatists of the period (Marlowe, Jonson, Greene, Lodge); intellectual discourses of the period (particularly law and religion, but also medicine and moral philosophy); and a wealth of modern theorists, such as Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, Hannah Arendt, Judith Butler, Jacques Derrida, Homi K. Bhabha, to name a few. Whenever possible, I also seek out opportunities to watch and/or stage Shakespeare’s drama. A good production exhibits the best aspects of criticism: close, yet sustained reading; a sense of purpose or timeliness; and an openness to the volatile, capricious character of meaning.

Research interests

Thanks to the generosity of the Leverhulme Trust, I am currently researching a monograph-length study on depictions of the exiled, banished, and displaced in Renaissance drama, 1575-1625. This project began with a journal article on Mucedorus, published in Law and Literature in 2021. I have since produced a number of book reviews and a forthcoming chapter on staging banishment for an edited collection on Shakespeare and exile with ACMRS.

I also continue my work on law, religion, and politics – particularly in relation to identity and self-knowledge. My first monograph, titled Office and Duty in King Lear, was published by Palgrave Shakespeare Studies in 2023. I have a completed and contracted chapter on ‘The Government of Self and Others: Ministerial Power and Hypocrisy’ in Measure for Measure: A Critical Reader (edited by John Jowett and Sarah Olive), which is currently under peer-review. I also have two more, rather esoteric chapters underway: one on Agamben’s conception of office in post-Reformation English thought; the other on the idea of the legal persona, deriving from an actor’s mask, and the metaphysical fiction of ‘incorporation’ in modern commerce. 

Qualifications

• PhD Shakespeare Studies, University of Birmingham
• BA (Hons) English and Theatre Studies, University of Melbourne

Professional memberships

• British Shakespeare Association
• European Shakespeare Research Association
• International Shakespeare Conference
• The Malone Society
• Renaissance Society of America
• Shakespeare Association of America
• Society for Renaissance Studies

Student education

My teaching focuses in two areas: a) Renaissance literature, especially Shakespeare, but also writers like Petrarch, Erasmus, Thomas More, Thomas Wyatt, Philip Sidney, and Edmund Spenser; and b) law and literature, especially with regards to transgression, injustice, and interpretation, ranging from Sophocles (Antigone, Oedipus the King) and Shakespeare (Measure for Measure, The Merchant of Venice) through to Agatha Christie, Sir Steve McQueen (Small Axe), and Umberto Eco (The Name of the Rose). At more advanced levels, I enjoy sharing my perspective on political theology and the influence of religious ideas on secular cultures of power, especially via Giorgio Agamben, but also Schmitt, Benjamin, Foucault, and Derrida. Coming from a performance background, I am keen to teach and support more practice-based work on Shakespeare. I would also welcome conversations with prospective doctoral students in any of these areas.