Emily MacLeod, Ph.D.

Emily MacLeod is assistant teaching professor of English, theatre, and humanities at Penn State Harrisburg. She holds a PhD in English from The George Washington University. Her doctoral dissertation, “Race Tricks: Skill and Spectacle in the Blackfriars Boys’ Repertory, 1600-1608,” was shortlisted for the Shakespeare Association of America’s J. Leeds Barroll Dissertation Prize. An excerpt from the dissertation was also selected for the Shakespeare Association’s Next Gen Plen, a plenary panel recognizing field-shifting work by early career scholars at their annual conference. Her research has also appeared in journals such as Shakespeare and Early Theatre, and she has written book and theatre reviews for Shakespeare Bulletin, Borrowers and Lenders, and Texas Theatre Journal. She has taught courses on Shakespeare, drama, mythology, and British literature and culture, and she won the GWU Amsterdam Graduate Teaching Award in 2022.

Alongside her scholarship and teaching, she is a theatre practitioner, director, and dramaturg. She has directed several Shakespeare plays at the American Shakespeare Center Theater Camp: King John (2016), The First Quarto of Hamlet (2018), Measure for Measure (2019), and Cymbeline (2023). Dramaturgy work includes The Mill Project (TheatreTruck, 2017), As You Like It, Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 (Brave Spirits Theatre, 2019-2020), and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Penn State Harrisburg, 2022). She will direct the musical Urinetown at Penn State Harrisburg in 2024.