Jeffrey Masten

Jeffrey Masten is the author of Textual Intercourse: Collaboration, Authorship, and Sexualities in Renaissance Drama (Cambridge), the most widely cited cultural history and analysis of collaborative writing in the early modern English theatre and its published drama, and the award-winning Queer Philologies: Sex, Language, and Affect in Shakespeare's Time (2016, 2018 pbk., Penn).

Masten's comprehensive scholarly edition of Christopher Marlowe's historical tragedy Edward II for the Arden Early Modern Drama/Arden Shakespeare series is forthcoming in early 2026. The edition incorporates his relocating of a previously unknown first-edition copy of the play, a discovery recounted in TLS (2012). Masten earlier edited the collaborative play The Old Law for the award-winning Oxford Middleton edition.

Masten is Professor of English and of Gender and Sexuality Studies at Northwestern University, where he teaches early English literature and culture, including Shakespeare and Marlowe, the history of the book, and gender, sexuality, and queer studies. Previously he has taught at the Folger Shakespeare Library's Folger Institute in Washington, DC, the University of Michigan, and the University of Chicago. Before joining Northwestern in 1998, he was Gardner Cowles Associate Professor in the Humanities at Harvard University.

Masten was educated at Denison University (B.A., English and Music) and the University of Pennsylvania (M.A. and Ph.D., English).

For a full bibliography of articles and essays, see his Northwestern English department faculty webpage.