Shorter College Hosts Shakespeare Scholar on Oct. 8

Charles W. Whitworth Jr., professor of English Renaissance studies in Montpelier, France, will give a lecture at Shorter College on Monday, Oct. 8, at 4 p.m. in the Austin Moses Room. The lecture is open to the public at no charge. His discussion is titled “‘Palpable gross plays’: Shakespearean comedy and the play-within-the-play.”

Dr. Whitworth is the director of the interdisciplinary Institute for Research on the Renaissance, the Neoclassical Age and the Enlightenment. He is a member of an advisory committee in his subject area for the French National Center for Scientific Research, and he has served as literary advisor to theatre directors in England and France. Publications to his credit include several editions of English Renaissance plays and a number of articles on medieval and Renaissance literature. He is the general editor of Cahiers Elisabethians: A Biannual Journal of English Renaissance Studies and of other collections of Elizabethan texts and studies.

Dr. Whitworth holds a doctoral degree from the University of Birmingham’s Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. He also holds a Master of Arts in Medieval and Renaissance English from the University of Birmingham and a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy from Earlham College in Indiana. Prior to his scholarly work in France, he served as a lecturer in English and an associate fellow of the Shakespeare Institute at Birmingham, England.

Dr. Whitworth has many ties to Shorter College. A Georgia native, he is the son of Dr. Charles Whitworth Sr., dean emeritus of the college. His siblings are alumni, and his brother has served on Shorter’s Board of Trustees. Additionally, Dr. Whitworth’s youngest son attended Shorter from 2004-2006. He previously lectured at Shorter in 1993 when he presented the Whitworth-Muldrow Lecture, “Seeing and Believing in Shakespeare.”

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