David Scott Kastan, newly appointed as the George M. Bodman Professor of English, is a scholar of early modern English literature and culture, especially Shakespeare and Milton, as well as of the history of the book, and editing and editorial theory.
Kastan is particularly interested in the relations of literature and history in early modern England. One of his areas of focus is on the production, transmission and reception of texts. He is one of the general editors of the Arden Shakespeare series (and editor of the edition “1 Henry IV”) and the series editor of the new Barnes and Noble Shakespeare. His other edited or co-edited books include “The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature,” John Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” Christopher Marlowe’s “Dr. Faustus” (A and B texts), “William Shakespeare: Poetry for Young People” and “A Companion to Shakespeare.” He is the author of “Shakespeare and the Book,” “Shakespeare After Theory” and “Shakespeare and the Shapes of Time,” among others. Kastan is currently working on two books: “Shakespeare and Religion” and “The Invention of English Literature.”
Kastan joins the Yale faculty after teaching at Columbia University since 1987. At Columbia, he served twice as chair of the Department of English and Comparative Literature. He was the inaugural recipient of the Faculty Mentoring Award and was honored with a Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching.
From 1973 to 1987, Kastan taught at Dartmouth College, where he directed the honor’s program and chaired the comparative literature department. He has also been a visiting professor at University College London and has held distinguished visiting professorships at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary, the University of Copenhagen and the American University in Cairo, Egypt.
Kastan earned his undergraduate degree at Princeton University and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Chicago.
The inaugural Oxford-Wells Lecturer at Oxford University this year, Kastan has also been the Lord Northcliffe Lecturer and R.W. Chambers Lecturer at the University of London. He was a 2003 Burke Library Scholar in Residence and a 2001 International Shakespeare Globe Fellow. He has received numerous fellowships during his career, including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2004.
In addition to his position at Yale, Kastan is an honorary research professor at University College London. He serves on the editorial boards of the Shakespeare Quarterly, TEXT, and the Huntington Library Quarterly and is an associate editor of the journal Reformation. He is on the executive committee of The Folger Institute of the Folger Shakespeare Library, among other professional activities.
