Peter S. Donaldson

photo: Alice Donaldson

Present Position:

Education:

Honors:

Recent Committees and Service:

• MLA New Variorum Committee
• MLA Shakespeare Division Representative
• Chair, MIT Search for Director of Libraries
• Committee for Academic Review of the Media Laboratory
• Committee for Education via Advanced Technology
• Academic Review Committee for Women's Studies
• Film and Media Studies Committee
• Humanities and Technology Committee
• Editorial Board EMLS

Books:

• Shakespearean Films/Shakespearean Directors, Unwin-Hyman, 1990 (now published by Routledge)
• Machiavelli and Mystery of State, Cambridge University Press, 1988
• A Machiavellian Treatise by Stephen Gardiner [critical edition of Ragionamento dell'advenimento delli inglesi et normanni in Ingliterra, with translation, introduction and notes], Cambridge University Press, 1976

Monograph:

• George Rainsford's "Ritratto D'Ingliterra (1556). Edition, translation, introduction, notes. In Camden Miscellany XXVII. London: The Royal Historical Society, pp. 49-111.

Articles in Journals; Chapters in Books:

• 1995:
  • The Shakespeare Interactive Archive: New Directions in Electronic Scholarship on Text and Performance," in Edward Barrett and Marie Redmond, eds. Contextual Media, MIT Press, 103-28.
• 1991:
  • "Taking on Shakespeare: Kenneth Branagh's Henry V," Shakespeare Quarterly, Spring, 60-72.
• 1989:
  • "Machiavelli and Imitatio Dei," Machiavelli Studies II, pp. 3-25.
• 1987:
  • "Liz White's Othello," Shakespeare Quarterly, Winter, 1987, pp. 482-95.1987
  • "Olivier, Hamlet and Freud,"Cinema Journal XXVI, pp. 29-54.
• 1986:
  • "Conflict and Coherence: Narcissism and Tragic Structure in Marlowe," in Narcissism and the Text: Studies in Literature and the Psychology of Self, eds. Barbara Schapiro and Lynne Layton. New York: New York University Press.
• 1985:
  • "Cardinal Pole, Machiavelli and Prophetic Typology," in Leaders of the Reformation and Counter Reformation, ed. Richard De Molen. Cranbury, N.J.: Associated University Presses, pp. 211-46.
• 1980:
  • "Bishop Gardiner, Machiavellian," Historical Journal XXIII, pp. 1-16.

Multimedia Essays:

• 1995:
  • "Digital Archives and Sybilline Sentences: The Tempest and the End of Books" (first presented at SAA Session, March)
• 1994:
  • "Books in Bits"(first presented at Harvard Center for Literary and Cultural Studies, February)
• 1993:
  • " Ghostly Texts and Virtual Performances: Old Hamlet in New Media" (first presented as SAA plenary, April)

Recent Lectures:

• 1995:
  • Shakespeare Birthday Lecture, Northeastern University (April)
  • Holt Lecturer, Clemson Shakespeare Festival (March)
  • Shakespeare Association of America (March)
• 1994:
  • Walking Shadows: Shakespeare on Film (Roehampton Inst., BFI), National Film Theatre, London (May)
  • Consensus ex machina? (International Conference on Computing in the Humanities), Sorbonne, Paris (April); Society for Cinema Studies, Syracuse (March)
  • Harvard Center for Literary and Cultural Studies (March)
  • Drake University, Faculty Seminar, Board of Trustees Meeting, Board of Trustees Academic Subcommittee Meeting (February)
  • Editing Elizabethan Dramatic Texts, Joint Meeting of Center for English Studies, U. of London and Center for Humanities Computing, Oxford, London (January).
• 1993:
  • MLA, Toronto (December)
  • ADE Western Seminar for Department Chairs, Las Vegas (June)
  • SAA, Atlanta (April)
  • International Conference on Mind and Media, Cambridge, MA (February).

Work in Progress or Forthcoming:

• Essays:
  • "On Prospero's Books "(for collection edited by Lynda Boose and Richard Burtt)
  • "The Shakespeare Electronic Archive: Text, Media and Theory" for volume on electronic text edited by Marilyn Deegan and Kathryn Sutherland
  • "God of Battles: Theodicy in Henry V and its Reflection in Performance"
  • "Two of Both Kinds: Marriage and Modernism in Midsummer Night's Dream Films"
• The Shakespeare Electronic Archive (with Larry Friedlander, Janet Murray, Michael Warren, Alan Young and others): Since 1992, the Shakespeare Electronic Archive team has been developing an extensive multimedia hypertext resource for the study of Shakespeare, based on computerized links connecting electronic texts, transcriptions of early editions, films and digitized images of the pages of early editions and artwork relevant to the plays, along with interactive film and performancer lexica and a variety of commentaries and other aids. The Classroom Presentation System, which has been in use at MIT for the last three years, now includes links between the Oxford Electronic Text of the plays and 24 complete film versions of Shakepseare's plays recorded on laserdisc. Using the system, students can write their own multimedia essays, incorporating electronic links between their interpretations of texts and film and citations from the films. A protoype of the Electronic Archive includes all of the films in the laserdisc collection and in addition facsimile texts of all three early editions of Hamlet, in some cases in multiple copies, and an extensive collection of engravings, watercolors, book illustrations and other artwork in digital form from the period 1799-1900 collected by Alan Young, Professor of English at Acadia University, N.S. The Shakespeare Electronic Archive is funded principally by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Professional Organizations:

Hobby:

Family:

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