About Dr. Theile

Dr. Verena Theile joined the NDSU English department as an Assistant Professor in the Fall of 2008. She completed her PhD in English at Washington State University in 2006 with a focus on 16th- and 17th-century British literature and culture, especially drama and pamphlet literature, and a dissertation on representations of the supernatural on the early modern stage. Her MA is from Minnesota State University, Mankato (2001), where her thesis work focused on 17th-century poetry and Hermetic philosophy. Prior to her appointment at NDSU, Theile held a doctoral fellowship at the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, Germany (2005), and served first as the Charles Blackburn post-doctoral fellow at Washington State University (2006) and then as a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Gonzaga University in Spokane (2007).Research: Dr. Verena Theile is co-editor of Reclaiming Home, Remembering Motherhood, Redefining History: African American and Afro-Caribbean Women’s Literature in the Twentieth-Century (CSP, 2009), Staging the Superstitions of Early Modern Europe (Ashgate, forthcoming Feb. 2013), and New Formalisms and Literary Theory (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming Sept. 2014) and co-translator of early modern German quack texts in M. A. Katritzky’s Performance and Medicine in the Writings of Three Early Modern Physicians: The Brothers Felix and Thomas Platter and Hippolytus Guarinonius (Ashgate, 2012).Her current book project, Performing Witchcraft in Early Modern England: Greene, Marlowe, Shakespeare, examines how superstitions were perceived and discussed in early modern pamphlet literature and then translated for the stage by early modern playwrights such as Robert Greene, Christopher Marlowe, and William Shakespeare. Highlighting their passage from the pamphlet to the play, she argues that, through their fictional representations on the early modern stage, superstitions reflect but also reshape beliefs.Teaching: Most regularly, Dr. Theile teaches courses in Shakespeare, literary theory, and early modern literature for the English department. She additionally offers graduate seminars in literature pedagogy, scholarly publishing, and adaptation studies. Her critical focus lies with New Historicism, historiography, and the New Formalism.Dr. Theile is the faculty leader for the Department's UK Study Abroad Program: 2018: Literature & Pop Culture in Dublin, London, and Edinburgh2016: England and Scotland: Literature and Popular Culture2014: Shakespeare & Popular Culture in England 

Courses taught:

240 World Masterpieces, 271 Literary Analysis, 315 British Literature I, 333 Fantasy and Science Fiction, 380 Shakespeare, 4/682 Renaissance Literature (Topics: Early Modern Superstitions, Faith in Conflict), 4/683 Topics in British Literature (Topics: Shakespearean Adaptations, Shakespeare & Theory), 758 Topics in Rhetoric and Writing (Topics: Editing and Publishing), 760 Graduate Scholarship, 766 Teaching Literature

Web Portfolio: vtheile.wordpress.comVerena Theile (cv)

Recent Publications

Books

• Verena Theile. Performing Witchcraft on the Early Modern Stage: Marlowe, Greene, and Shakespeare. New York: Routledge. (ca. 125,000 words); revise/resubmit from external review; no due date.
• Verena Theile. Shakespeare on the Prairie, 1916-2016. Fargo: NDSU Press. no due date.
• Verena Theile, Linda Tredennick, eds. New Formalisms and Literary Theory (with a Foreword by Heather Dubrow). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, Apr. 2013. (ca. 120,000 words)
• Verena Theile, Andrew McCarthy, eds. Staging the Superstitions of Early Modern Europe (with a Foreword by Darren Oldridge). Burlington, US: Ashgate Publishing, Feb. 2013. (ca. 125,000 words)
• Verena Theile, Marie Drews, eds. Reclaiming Home, Remembering Motherhood, Rewriting History: African American and Afro-Caribbean Women’s Literature in the Twentieth Century. Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Jun. 2009. (ca. 122,000 words)

Introductions

• Verena Theile. “New Formalism(s): A Prologue.” In New Formalisms and Literary Theory. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, May 2013. pp. 3-28. (ca. 10,000 words)
• Verena Theile, Andrew McCarthy “Superstitions, History, Literature, and the Creative Imagination.” In Staging the Superstitions of Early Modern Europe.Burlington, US: Ashgate Publishing, Feb. 2013. pp. 1-20. (ca. 7,600 words)
• Verena Theile, Marie Drews. “Being Human in the World.” In Reclaiming Home, Remembering Motherhood, Rewriting History. Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009. pp. vii-xxi. (ca. 5,600 words)

Book Chapters

• Verena Theile. “Early Modern Engagements with Fear, Witchcraft, the Devil, and that Damned Dr. Faustus.” In Staging the Superstitions of Early Modern Europe (Studies in Performance and Early Modern Drama). Eds. Verena Theile and Andrew McCarthy. Burlington, US: Ashgate Publishing, Feb. 2013. pp. 59-84. (ca. 10,000 words)
• Verena Theile. “Demonising Macbeth.” In Magical Transformations on the Early Modern English Stage (Studies in Performance and Early Modern Drama).Eds. Lisa Hopkins and Helen Ostovich. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2014. pp. 75-89.(ca. 7,500 words)
• Verena Theile. "Shakespeare on the Prairie: ShakespeareFest 2016." In Commemorating Shakespeare. Ed. Monika Smialkowska and Edmund King. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2018. (ca. 7,000 words)
• Verena Theile. “Demons in the Theater.” In The Brill Companion to the Devil and Demons. Ed. Kathryn Edwards. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill NV, forthcoming 2020. (8-9,000 words); contract in hand.

Refereed Translations

• MA Katritzky, Verena Theile, trans. “Felix Platter: the 1598 Wedding of Johann Georg,
Count of Hohenzollern, and Franziska, Countess of Salm.” In MA Katritzky’s Healing and Performance in the Writings of three Early Modern Physicians: The Brothers Felix and Thomas Platter and Hippolytus Guarinonius. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2012. 283-302. (ca. 7,600 words)
• MA Katritzky, Verena Theile, trans. “Thomas Platter in Avignon: Jewish Life and
a Performing Quack Troupe in 1598.” In MA Katritzky’s Healing and Performance. 303-316. (ca. 5,200 words)
• MA Katritzky, Verena Theile, trans. “Hippolytus Guarinonius’s Grewel:
35 Commedia dell’Arte Lazzi.” In MA Katritzky’s Healing and Performance. 317-338. (ca. 8,400 words)

Teaching Resource

• Verena Theile. “Course Guide for English 467: Shakespeare.” Distance Degree Programs. Moscow, ID: Independent Study in Idaho, 2008. 118pp. (ca. 47,370 words)

Encyclopedia 

• Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay. The Literary Encyclopedia: http://litencyc.com/ (forthcoming in 2018)