PhD in English/Irish Studies, University of Notre Dame, 2008

MA in British and Irish Literature, University of Notre Dame, 2007

MA in Italian Language and Literature, University of Notre Dame, 2004

Dr. Katherine Hennessey is Associate Professor of Global Literature and Shakespeare at Wenzhou-Kean University. She researches literature, theatre, and film in the Arabian Gulf, Yemen, and Ireland, with a particular focus on global adaptations of Shakespeare.

She is the author of Shakespeare on the Arabian Peninsula (Palgrave-Macmillan 2018) and co-editor, with Margaret Litvin, of Shakespeare & the Arab World (Berghahn 2019). She also directed the short film Shakespeare in Yemen (2018) and translated from Arabic the first two Yemeni plays to appear in English, A Crime on Restaurant Street and The Colonel’s Wedding, both by Wajdi al-Ahdal.

Her articles have appeared in academic journals including Multicultural Shakespeare, Shakespeare Bulletin, Arabian Humanities, and Critical Survey. Her research has been supported by grants from the Fulbright, Mellon, and Beinecke Foundations, and in 2020-21 she held a year-long Research Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities in the US.

Shakespeare

Theatre and performance

Adaptation and translation

Irish, Italian, and Arabic literature and film

Books

Shakespeare on the Arabian Peninsula. Global Shakespeares series, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.

Shakespeare & the Arab World. Co-edited (with Margaret Litvin). Berghahn Press, 2019.

Peer-Reviewed Articles (selected)

“Concealing, Simulating, or Re-Defining Disability? Richard III and Performing (with) Disability in Arabian Gulf Theatre.” Shakespeare International Yearbook (2023).

“Bending the Plot Arc Towards Justice: Adaptation as Rebellion Against the Shakespearean Status Quo.” Shakespeare Bulletin, Vol. 39 No. 4, pp. 667-682. 

“Interpreting Othello on the Arabian Peninsula: Shakespeare in a Time of  Blackface Controversies.” Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance, Vol. 22 No. 37 (2020), pp. 103-123.

“Sculpting in Sand: The Construction of Narrative in Contemporary Yemeni Theatre.” Arab Journal of Performance Studies, Vol. 4, May 2017, pp. 59-69.

“Othello in Oman: Ahmad al-Izki’s Fusion of Shakespeare and Classical Arab Epic.” Critical Survey, Vol. 28 No. 3 (2016), pp. 47-66.

“Staging the Revolution: The Drama of Yemen’s Arab Spring.” Arabian Humanities, Vol. 4 (2015). Also available from Arabian Humanities in Arabic translation.

Peer-Reviewed Essays (selected)

“Readers and Rebels: Ireland, Shakespeare and the 1916 Easter Rising,” in Shakespeare at War: A Material History, edited by Amy Lidster and Sonia Massai. Cambridge University Press, 2023, pp. 121-127.

“Canonising Cleopatra? Shakespeare400 and the Library, Lovers, and Saints of Alexandria.” In Memorializing Shakespeare: Commemoration and Collective Identity, 1916–2016, edited by Edmund King and Monika Smialkowska. Palgrave, 2022, pp. 171-195.

“William Shakespeare: Worlds Here, There and Elsewhere,” in A Companion to World Literature, edited by Christine Chism and Ken Seigneurie. Wiley-Blackwell, 2020.

“Can We Talk to Terrorists? Extremism and the Potential for Dialogue, as Portrayed in Yemeni Film and Theatre.” In Yemen and the Search for Stability, edited by Marie-Christine Heinz. I.B. Tauris, 2018, pp. 258-277.

“All the World's a Stage Designed by Zaha Hadid: How the Gulf’s New Mega-theatres Attempt to Promote ‘Global’ Identities.” In Representing the Nation: Heritage, Museums, National Narratives, and Identity in the Arab Gulf States, edited by Pamela Erskine-Loftus, Mariam al-Mulla, and Victoria Hightower. Routledge, 2016, pp. 147-161.

Film

Shakespeare in Yemen. Short documentary, 2018 (Director, with Amin Hazaber). Screened at the Signature Theatre in New York City, June 2018, and at the Middle East Studies Association FilmFest, November 2018.

Translations (selected)

“Last Tuesday,” a poem by Ziyad Al-Qahem. From Modern Standard Arabic to English. World Literature Today (Fall 2021), p. 66

The Colonel’s Wedding, a play by Wajdi al-Ahdal. From Modern Standard Arabic to English. Words Without Borders (2019).

A Crime on Restaurant Street, a play by Wajdi al-Ahdal. From Modern Standard Arabic to English. Arab Stages, Vol. 5. No. 1 (2016).

Ophelia is Not Dead at 47: An interview with Nabyl Lahlou by Khalid Amine. From French to English. Critical Survey, Vol. 28 No. 3 (2016), pp. 158-165.

For more, please see ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID):

0000-0002-7235-0590.

ENG 2403: World Literature

ENG 3215: Shakespeare

ENG 4817: Senior Seminar