Ayanna Thompson

Director of Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and Professor,
Arizona State University

Ayanna Thompson is director of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (ACMRS) at Arizona State University. She is author of Shakespeare in the Theatre: Peter Sellars (Arden Bloomsbury, 2018); Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race, and Contemporary America (Oxford University Press, 2011); Performing Race and Torture on the Early Modern Stage (Routledge, 2008); and co-author of Teaching Shakespeare with Purpose: A Student-Centered Approach (Arden Bloomsbury, 2016). She wrote the new introduction for the revised Arden3 Othello (Arden, 2016), and is editor of Weyward Macbeth: Intersections of Race and Performance (Palgrave, 2010) and Colorblind Shakespeare: New Perspectives on Race and Performance (Routledge, 2006). She currently is working on a collection of essays for Cambridge University Press on Shakespeare and race, and is collaborating with Curtis Perry for a new edition of Titus Andronicus. Professor Thompson is the 2018-2019 president of the Shakespeare Association of America and has served as a member of the board of directors for the Association of Marshall Scholars. She was one of Phi Beta Kappa’s Visiting Scholars for 2017-2018.