Celia R. Caputi

Professor
Photograph of Celia Caputi by Cindy Miller
WMS 422
Shakespeare/Early Modern Studies, Feminist Critical Theory, Cultural Studies, Virginia Woolf, Italian Studies

CELIA R. CAPUTI. Professor Caputi (formerly Daileader) specializes in Renaissance literature and feminist theory/criticism, with additional interests in Virginia Woolf, cultural studies, transnationalism, and Italian studies. She is one of the contributors of the ground-breaking Oxford edition of Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works and has been quoted in Time magazine (European edition) as an authority on Middleton's women, especially in relation to Shakespeare's. In August 2015, Professor Caputi was invited by the Royal Shakespeare Company to chair the debate "Is Othello a Racist Play?" in Shakespeare's birthplace of Stratford-upon-Avon. Professor Caputi was a semi-finalist in the annual literary competition associated with Italy's prestigious Salon del Libro di Torino; her autobiographical essay "Come l'ago della bussola" ("Like the Needle of the Compass") is the only work by a North American in the anthology associated with this event, Linguamadre Duemilatredici.  Most recently, she was interviewed by Emmanuel Dzotsi of NPR's "This American Life": her voice features in the episode entitled "The Florida Experiment" aired on July 14th, 2023.

Books

  • Some Strange Music. A Novel. In progress.
  • She Dances the Tarantella. Kindle Direct Publishing, 2013.
  • Women & Others: Perspectives on Race, Gender, and Empire. Co-edited with Rhoda E. Johnson and Amilcar Shabazz. Palgrave, 2007.
  • John Fletcher, The Tamer Tamed. Co-edited with Gary Taylor. Manchester University Press: Revels Student Editions, 2007.
  • Racism, Misogyny, and the Othello Myth: Inter-racial Couples from Shakespeare to Spike Lee. Cambridge University Press, 2005.
  • Eroticism on the Renaissance Stage: Transcendence, Desire, and the Limits of the Visible. Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Articles

  • "Belated Epiphanies: Intersectionality and Education in Virginia Woolf's The Voyage Out and Nella Larsen's Quicksand."  Woolf Studies Annual, 2023.
  • "Prospera's Whip and Other Props of Bardolatry: Toward an Intersectionalist Re-telling of The Tempest." Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation, 2022.
  • "A U.S. Feminist in the 'Land of Remorse': Re-considering the Southern Italian Cult of Tarantism." Italian Americana (Summer 2020).
  • " 'A Whore You Are, Madam,' or the Binary that Wasn't: Female Dyads and Doubling in John Fletcher's The Chances and Women Pleased." Early Modern Literary Studies, 2017.
  • “A Tale of Two Tamings: Reading the Early Modern Shrew Debate from a Feminist Transnationalist Perspective." Rethinking Shakespeare and Italy: Cultural Exchanges from the Early Modern Period to the Present, eds. Ezna De Francisi and Chris Stamatakis. Routledge, 2017.
  • "Renaissance and Restoration Comedy." Macmillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks: Gender, Volume VI: Laughter, series eds. Renée D. Hoogland, Nicole Fleetwood, and Iris van der Tuin. Cengage Learning, 2017.
  • "Othello's Sister: Racial Hermaphroditism and Appropriation in Virginia Woolf's Orlando." Studies in the Novel (Spring 2013).
  • Come l’ago della bussola.” Lingua Madre Duemilatredici—Racconti di donne straniere in Italia, ed. Daniela Finocchi. Edizioni Seb27, 2013.
  • “ ‘Nothing But Pickled Cucumbers’: The Longing Wives of Thomas Middleton.” Staged Transgression in Early Modern England, eds. Rory Loughnane and Edel Semple. Palgrave, 2013.
  • "Thomas Middleton, William Shakespeare, and the Masculine Grotesque." The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Middleton, eds. Gary Taylor and Patricia Thomas Henley. Oxford University Press, 2012.
  • "Weird Brothers: What Thomas Middleton's The Witch Can Tell Us about Race, Sex, and Gender in Macbeth." Weyward Macbeth: Intersections of Race and Performance, eds. Ayanna Thompson and Scott Newstock. Palgrave 2010.
  • “Sex and the City Comedy: Moll Cutpurse, Carrie Bradshaw, and the Power of the Feminist (?) Purse.” Shakespeare et la Cité, actes du Congrès organisé par la Societé Francaise Shakespeare les 11,12 et 13 mars 2010, eds. Pierre Kapitaniak and Dominique Goy-Blanquet (2010).
  • "Re-writing Rape, Re-raping Rites: Shakespeare's and Middleton's Lucrece Poems." Violence, Politics, and Sexuality in Early Modern Literature, ed. Joseph Patrick Ward. Palgrave, 2007.
  • "The Courtesan Re-visited: Thomas Middleton, Pietro Aretino, and Sex-phobic Criticism." Italian Culture in the Drama of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries: Rewriting, Remaking, Refashioning, ed. Michele Marrapodi. Ashgate Press, 2007.
  • Commentary for Thomas Middleton's A Mad World, My Masters. The Collected Works of Thomas Middleton, gen. eds. Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino. Oxford University Press, 2007.
  • “The Order of Persons,” co-authored with Gary Taylor and Alexandra G. Bennett. Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture: A Companion to the Oxford Middleton, eds. Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino. Oxford University Press, 2007.
  • "Introduction: Who Is the Other Woman?" Women & Others: Perspectives on Race, Gender, and Empire. Eds. Celia R. Daileader, Rhoda E. Johnson, and Amilcar Shabazz. Palgrave, 2007.
  • "The Cleopatra Complex: White Actresses on the Inter-racial Classic Stage," Colorblind Shakespeare: New Perspectives on Race and Performance, ed. Ayanna Thompson. Routledge, 2006.
  • "Back-door Sex: Renaissance Gynosodomy, Aretino, and the Exotic," English Literary History 69.2 (Summer 2002). Re-printed with modifications in Straight Writ Queer: Non-Normative Expressions of Heterosexuality in Literature, ed. Richard Fantina (McFarland, 2006).
  • "Nude Shakespeare in Film and Nineties' Popular Feminism," in Shakespeare and Sexuality, ed. Stanley Wells. Cambridge University Press, 2001. Re-printed in Fathom.com.
  • "Stalking: Cultural, Clinical, and Legal Considerations," with Karen Quinn, Carol E. Jordan, and Bradley Jordan, Brandeis Law Journal (Spring, 2000).
  • "Casting Black Actors: Beyond Othellophilia," in Shakespeare and Race, ed. Stanley Wells and Catherine Alexander. Cambridge University Press, 2000.
  • "The Uses of Ambivalence: Pornography and Female Heterosexual Identity." Women's Studies 26.1 (January 1997).
  • Commentary for Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Columbia University Press, 1997. CD-Rom.
  • "When a Sparrow Falls: Women Readers, Male Critics, and John Skelton's Phyllyp Sparowe." Philological Quarterly 75.4 (Fall 1996). Repinted in Poetry Criticism (Gale Publishing, 1999) and Literary Criticism (Gale Publishing, 2002).
  • "The Thopas-Melibee Sequence and the Defeat of Antifeminism." The Chaucer Review 29.1 (Summer 1994).

Short Publications

  • “Headlines Tell a Story.” Letter to the Editor, The Tampa Bay Times. June 21, 2020.
  • "Gallipoli." Poem. The Journal (Spring/Summer 2010).
  • “Middleton’s Vindication of Women.” Program Note for The Revenger’s Tragedy at the National Theatre, London. May, 2008.
  • "Eating," "Goddess," and "Great Mother," in Feminist Literary Theory: A Dictionary. Ed., Beth Kowaleski-Wallace. New York: Garland Publishing, 1997.