• Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 1990

Professor Charnes specializes in Shakespeare Studies and early modern culture through the Restoration and long seventeenth century. Her research focuses on the uses of Shakespeare in the arenas of mass culture, literature, film, and contemporary international politics. Her other areas of expertise include Restoration literature, Milton, theoretical approaches to performativity, psychoanalysis and the performance of everyday life, political philosophy from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, and all areas of critical theory. Her first book, Notorious Identity: Materializing the Subject in Shakespeare, showcased Shakespeare’s use of legendary figures to critique emerging problems of fame and notoriety. Her second book, Hamlet’s Heirs: Shakespeare and the Politics of a New Millennium, traced the legacy of Shakespeare’s most famous princes—Hamlet and Hal—and their impact, covert and overt, on contemporary British and American politics and society. She is currently working on two new book projects: one on Milton and the political psychology of the post-Interregnum, and the other on Shakespearean performance and the impact of new interactive media on concepts such as “audience,” spectatorship, and performative identification.

Professor Charnes is the recipient of the 2021 James Holland and David Morley “Career Distinguished Teaching and Service Award”.