Travis Curtright, Ph.D.

Travis Curtright, PhD, is Chair of the Humanities and Liberal Studies department at Ave Maria University, where he also serves as Professor of Humanities and Literature, and director of Shakespeare in Performance, a troupe of actors and minor of studies. Professor Curtright completed his education at the University of Dallas, earning his doctorate in Literature. He also has professional acting training from the American Shakespeare Center and studied improv at The Second City in Chicago. He founded Shakespeare in Performance in 2012 and instructs students in voice, movement upon a thrust stage, and especially in Shakespeare’s uses of language and rhetoric. Actors rehearse in a black box theater that was specially designed for their productions, and in an environment that encourages both individual growth and ensemble work.

An accomplished scholar in both Shakespeare and More studies, Dr. Curtright has written The Controversial Thomas More: Politics, Polemics, and Prison Writings (forthcoming from the University of Notre Dame Press), Shakespeare’s Dramatic Persons (2017), and The One Thomas More (2012). He is editor of Thomas More: Why Patron of Statesmen? (2015) and, with Stephen Smith, Shakespeare’s Last Plays: Essays in Literature and Politics (2012). Since 2017, he has served as editor-in-chief of Moreana: Thomas More and Renaissance Studies, published by Edinburgh University Press. To learn more, please visit this link.

• The Controversial Thomas More: Politics, Polemics, and Prison Writings. View on Amazon
• Shakespeare's Dramatic Persons. View on Amazon
• The One Thomas More. View on Amazon
• Thomas More: Why Patron of Statesmen? View on Amazon
• Shakespeare's Last Plays: Essays in Literature and Politics. View on Amazon
• Moreana: Thomas More and Renaissance Studies. Learn more

Other publications (selected):

• “The Return of an Author: The Essential Works of Thomas More,” Moreana 58.1 (2021): 4-30.
• “Love and Friendship in William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing” in Educating young people through the classics: Love, friendship, and storytelling, ed. Norberto Gonzalez Gaitano, (Rome: Edizioni  Santa Croce, 2020), 53-64.
• “The making of a martyr and loss of a poet: Richard Tottel, Reginald Pole, and Thomas More in 1556-57,” Moreana 55.1 (June,  2018): 1-23.
• “Thomas More and the ‘genius’ of Utopia,” Moreana 54.1 (June, 2017): 1-18.
• “Sir Thomas More and his Opposition to Henry VIII in 1533” in Why Patron of Statesmen? (2015).
• “Thomas More’s Uses of Humor,” LOGOS: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 17:1 (Winter,2014): 13-35.
• The History of King Richard III by Thomas More: Student edition, ed. by Gerard B. Wegemer and Travis Curtright (Center for Thomas More Studies,  2003, 2013).
• “‘Stops’ in the Name of Love: Playing Typological Iago,” in Shakespeare’s Sense of Character—On the Page and From the Stage, ed. Yu Jin Ko and Michael W. Shurgot (London: Ashgate,  2012).
• "'Falseness cannot come from thee': Marina as Character and Orator in Shakespeare's Pericles," Literary Imagination 11:1 (2009): 99-110.
• “Shakespearean Personalism,” LOGOS: A Journal of Catholic Thought 10:1 (2007): 56-79.
• “A ‘Pre-Machiavellian Moment’: Thomas More’s Poetry and the History of Richard III,” The Ben Jonson Journal 13 (2006): 63-82.
• “Sidney’s Defence of Poetry: Ethos and the Ideas,” The Ben Jonson Journal 10 (2003): 101-115.
• “Reconsidering the Tragic Aspects of Leontes: Death and Laughter in The Winter’s Tale, "English Language Notes: Medieval and Renaissance Special Edition 40:1 (September, 2002): 43-57.