Erika Boeckeler

Associate Professor of English
Erika Boeckeler’s work spans multiple genres and disciplines: Shakespeare, early modern poetry, History of the Book, early modern art history, early Slavic print culture. Her book, Playful Letters: A Study in Early Modern Alphabetics (University of Iowa Press, 2017), argues that artistic experimentation with the alphabet had a sweeping impact on the intellectual and social history of the early modern period. The linking of letters and typography with bodies produced a new kind of literacy in audiences, which in turn expanded narrative possibilities.
Dr. Boeckeler has published on printers’ ornaments in Shakespeare’s plays, sixteenth century widow printers, the poetic typography of the first printed Hamlet, painted writing in German portraiture, on the first architectural alphabet, on teaching in the archives, among other topics.
Her current book project blends her expertise in book history and comparative methodologies with premodern critical race theory. The aim is to reveal how discourses of race (e.g. black inke, faire paper). are embedded in the foundations of European printing and its literary output. Dr. Boeckeler is also the editor of Shakespeare’s poem, “A Louers Complaint,” at Internet Shakespeare Editions, and serves on the editorial board of English Literary Renaissance. Her research has received numerous national and international awards.
Digital Projects:
http://cacodemonshakespeare.com (early print playtexts edited by students)
https://dragonprayerbook.northeastern.edu/ (on Northeastern’s medieval manuscript)
2017-18
Northeastern University Humanities Center Faculty Fellow
2014
Harvard Dept. of Comparative Lit. First Book Publication Subsidy
ACLA First Book Subvention Funds
2012-13
Wellesley Newhouse Center for the Humanities Fellow
2010-11
Huntington Library Barbara Thom Postdoctoral Fellowship
2009-10
Folger Shakespeare Library Short-Term Fellowship
2007
NEH Summer Seminar Participant, “The Reformation of the Book”
2006
Whiting Dissertation Completion Fellowship
Harvard University English Department, Winthrop Sargent Prize in Shakespeare
Harvard University English Department, William Harris Arnold and Gertrude Arnold Weld Prize in Book History
Monograph
- Playful Letters: A Study in Early Modern Alphabetics, University of Iowa Press, 2017. Series “Impressions: Studies in the Art, Culture, and Future of Books” https://www.uipress.uiowa.edu/books/9781609384746/playful-letters
Articles & Book Chapters
- “Alphabets” Routledge Encyclopedia of the Renaissance World, subject ed. Wendy Beth Hyman, Routledge, 2024.
- “Dogs Urinating on the 1623 Folio: The Jaggard Press’s Dionysus Ornament in Context”Shakespeare, Special Issue on The First Folio, September, 2023.
- “Comb Poems” in Dynamic Matter: Renaissance Travelling Objects, ed Jennifer Linhart Wood; Pennsylvania State University Press, 2022. pp. 55-80.
- “Left to Their Own Devices: Sixteenth-century Widows and Their Printers’ Devices” in Women’s Labour and the History of the Book in Early Modern England, ed Valerie Wayne; Bloomsbury Press, Arden Shakespeare Series, 2020.
- “The Hamlet First Quarto (1603) & the Play of Typography” Early Theatre, v21.1 (2018): 59-86. https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/38585 (awarded Honorable Mention for 2019 Best Interpretive Essay, Vols 20-2. Reprinted in Routledge Handbook of Shakespeare and Interface, eds. Paul Budra, Clifford Werier, 2023.
- “Staging the Alphabet in Shakespeare’s Comedies” in Journal of the Wooden O, 14-15(2015): 21-42
- “Painting Writing in Albrecht Dürer’s Self-Portrait of 1500” Word & Image, 28.1 (2012): 30-56. https://doi.org/10.1080/02666286.2011.651262
- “Building Meaning: The First Architectural Alphabet” in Push Me, Pull You: Art and Devotional Interaction in Late Medieval & Early Modern Europe, eds S. Blick & L. Gelfand; E.J. Brill, May 2011. 149-195. http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/books/b9789004215139_006
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Education
PhD in Comparative Literature, Harvard University
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Contact
(617) 373-7047 e.boeckeler@northeastern.edu -
Address
427 Holmes Hall
360 Huntington Avenue
Boston, MA 02115 -
Office Hours
Tuesdays 1:30pm-3:00pm and by appointment
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Associations
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Introduction to Literary Studies
ENGL 1400
Offers a foundational course designed for English majors. Introduces the methods and topics of English literary and textual studies, including allied media (e.g., film, graphic narrative). Explores strategies for reading, interpreting, and theorizing about texts; for conducting research; for developing skills in thinking analytically and writing clearly about complex ideas; and for entering into written dialogue with scholarship in the diverse fields that comprise literary studies.

Introduction to Shakespeare
ENGL 1600
Introduces students to a selection of Shakespeare’s major plays in each of the principle genres of comedy, tragedy, history, and romance.