Gavin Paul

B.Mgt. (Lethbridge), BA (Lethbridge), MA (UBC), PhD (UBC)
Gavin Paul

My research interests centre on Shakespeare and early modern drama. My work on the intersections of editorial practice, textual theory, and performance history has appeared in The Review of English Studies, Shakespeare: The Journal of the British Shakespeare Association, The Bulletin for the Society of Renaissance Studies, Comitatus,The Upstart Crow, and Literature Compass (where I am the three-time winner of Blackwell Publishing’s Essay Prize). My doctoral thesis analyzing the history of Shakespearean editors’ engagements with performance won the Paul G. Stanwood Prize from UBC and the J. Leeds Barroll Dissertation Prize from the Shakespeare Association of America–this international prize is awarded in recognition of the year’s outstanding work in Shakespeare studies. My first book, Shakespeare and the Imprints of Performance (Palgrave MacMillan, 2014), received very positive reviews and was reprinted in 2016. I am currently editing the Internet Shakespeare Edition of Macbeth (with Anthony Dawson).

I am also interested in comic book literature and literary responses to 9/11; my work in these fields has appeared in American Periodicals, European Comic Art, and The Encyclopedia of Comic Books and Graphic Novels.

I love being a husband and a father, I have difficulty letting go of old t-shirts and sneakers, and I daydream about sports and comic books more than I would like to admit. I have recently published Conspiracy of One, a collection of short stories, and The Coward, a collection of essays on topics ranging from fatherhood to the strange pains and pleasures of a life devoted to solitary reading.

Courses taught

  • English 1100: Introduction to University Writing
  • English 1202: Reading and Writing about Selected Topics
  • English 1204: Reading and Writing about Genre
  • English 2200: Foundations of Western Literature
  • English 2316: English Literature: 14th to 18th Centuries
  • English 2330: Studies in Drama
  • English 2345: Graphic Novels and Comic Book Literature
  • English 3320: Studies in Shakespeare
  • English 3321: English Renaissance Drama, Excluding Shakespeare
  • English 3323: Seventeenth-Century British Literature
  • English 3380: Popular Writing and Culture

Areas of Interest

Shakespeare; Early Modern Drama and Literature; Editorial Theory and Practice; Graphic Novels and Comic Book Literature; Literary Responses to 9/11; Cormac McCarthy

Scholarly Work

  • • “Cormac McCarthy: A Biography.” Critical Insights: All the Pretty Horses, edited by Laura Nicosia, Salem Press, 2023, pp. xxxiii-xlii.
  • • “Participating immortality’: Memory and Performance in Middleton’s Hengist, King of Kent.” Early Theatre, vol. 26, no. 2, 2023, pp. 79-99.
  • “Cressida’s Letter: Readings and Performances in the Shakespearean Archive.” Editing, Performance, Texts: New Practices in Medieval and Early Modern English Drama, edited by Jacqueline Jenkins and Julie Sanders, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, pp. 146-67.
  • Shakespeare and the Imprints of Performance (Palgrave, 2014)
  • “‘Performance as ‘punctuation’: Editing Shakespeare in the Eighteenth Century.” The Review of English Studies, vol. 61, no.250, 2010, pp. 390-413.
  • “English Renaissance Drama: The Imprints of Performance.” Literature Compass, vol. 5, no.3, 2008, pp. 529-540. -Reprinted in The Bulletin of the Society for Renaissance Studies, vol.25, no.2, 2008, pp. 5-18. This essay won Blackwell Publishing’s 2007 Graduate Essay Prize, Renaissance Section.
  • “Imprinting Performance: Editorial Mediations of Page and Stage.” Shakespeare: The Journal of the British Shakespeare Association, vol. 4, no.1, 2008, pp. 22-40.
  • “Border Wars: Shakespeare, Robert Lepage, and the Production of National Sentiment.” The Upstart Crow: A Shakespeare Journal, vol. 26, 2006/2007, pp. 45-60.
  • “Ashes in the Gutter: 9/11 and the Serialization of Memory in DC Comics’ Human Target.” American Periodicals: A Journal of History, Criticism, and Bibliography, vol. 17, no.2, 2007, pp. 208-227.
  • “Reading Shakespearean Violence.” Literature Compass, vol. 4, no. 3, 2007, pp. 797-808. -Reprinted in Literature Compass 5, Virtual Issue: Violence and Conflict (February 2008). This essay won Blackwell Publishing’s 2006 Graduate Essay Prize, Shakespeare Section.
  • “Theatrical and National Spaces in Cymbeline.” Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, vol. 37, 2006, pp. 169-92.
  • “A Brief History of the Edited Shakespearean Text.” Literature Compass, vol. 3, no. 2, 2006, pp. 182-94. This essay won Blackwell Publishing’s 2005 Graduate Essay Prize, Shakespeare Section.