Michael Saenger, Professor of English, teaches and writes on Shakespeare from a wide variety of perspectives. He is the author of two books, The Commodification of Textual Engagements in the English Renaissance (Ashgate, 2006), and Shakespeare and the French Borders of English (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), editor of Interlinguicity, Internationality and Shakespeare (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2014), and co-editor of Shakespeare in Succession: Translation and Time (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2023). He has been a Finalist for the Southwestern Teaching Award, and he teaches on Shakespeare, translation and early literature. 

He has been an invited speaker in Rome, Tokyo, London and many cities in North America. His bachelors degree is from the University of California, Berkeley, and he received his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto.

Honors & Awards

• 2019-2020 Invited Academic Visitor at Cambridge University
• 2010 Visiting Fellow, Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies
• 2008 Finalist for Southwestern University Teaching Award
• 2002-2009 Cullen Faculty Development Awards
• 2000 A.S.P. Woodhouse Prize 
• 1998-1999 University of Toronto Department of English Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award

Books:

Shakespeare in Succession: Translation and Time. Co-edited with Sergio Costola. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023.

Interlinguicity, Internationality and Shakespeare. Edited with an introduction by Michael Saenger. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014. Reviewed in Choice, Renaissance and Reformation, University of Toronto Quarterly

Shakespeare and the French Borders of English. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Reviewed in Renaissance Quarterly, Shakespeare Quarterly

The Commodification of Textual Engagements in the English Renaissance. Ashgate, 2006. Reviewed in Renaissance Quarterly, Review of English Studies, Sixteenth Century Journal, Times Literary Supplement.

Articles:

“Do Not Call Them Bastards”: Shakespeare as an Invasive Species, Palgrave Communications (2016)

Nashe, Tragicomedy and The Winter’s Tale. Notes and Queries 260 (2015): 116-117.

Co-authored with Sergio Costola, “Shakespeare’s Venice and the Grammar of the Modern City.” Shakespeare and the Italian Renaissance: Appropriation, Transformation, Opposition. Edited by Michele Marrapodi. Ashgate, 2014, 145-162.

“Interlinguicity and The Alchemist.” Multilingualism in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries. Ed. Dirk Delabastita and Ton Hoenselaars. English Text Construction 6 (2013): 176-200.

“The Limits of Translation in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Shakespeare Survey 65 (2012): 69-76.

“The Birth of Advertising,” in Printing and Parenting in Early Modern England. ed. Douglas Brooks. Ashgate, 2005.

“Pericles and the Burlesque of Romance.” Pericles: Critical Essays. Ed. David Skeele. New York: Garland, 2000. Book reprinted by Routledge, 2009. Saenger essay reprinted in Shakespeare Criticism 90.

“Ah ain’t heard whut de tex wuz: The (Il)legitimate Textuality of Old English and Black English.” Oral Tradition 14 (1999).

“Did Sidney Revise Astrophil and Stella?” Studies in Philology 96 (1999).

“The Costumes of Caliban and Ariel qua Sea-Nymph.” Notes and Queries 240 (1995).

Review article on Hackett Publishing’s editions of Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene. Comitatus. 38 (2007)

“Nashe’s Pamphletarie Periwigge.” Notes and Queries 246 (2001).

“Dekker’s Shoemaker’s Holiday.” Explicator 57 (1999).

“Nashe, Moth and the Date of Love’s Labour’s Lost.” Notes and Queries 243 (1998).

“A Reference to Ovid in Coriolanus.” English Language Notes 34 (1997).

“Will Stephen Wrest Bombast from Falstaff?” James Joyce Quarterly 35 (1997).

“Shakespeare’s Macbeth.” Explicator 53 (1995).

“Manningham on Malvolio.” Shakespeare Newsletter 43 (1993).

Keynote Lecture at the University of London’s conference “Adapting, Performing and Reviewing Shakespeare in a European Context.”

Interviewed on Belarus television regarding Hamlet, directed by Igor Kazakov in Mogilev.