Michael Friedman

Education

B. A., Tulane University
M.A., Ph.D. Boston University

Expertise

Dr. Michael Friedman teaches courses in Shakespeare, Medieval and Renaissance Literature, and Drama at the University of Scranton. He is the author of "The World Must Be Peopled". Shakespeare's Comedies of Forgiveness (2002) and the volume devoted to Titus Andronicus in the Shakespeare and Performance Series published by Manchester University Press (2013). His articles on Shakespeare in performance have appeared in such journals as Shakespeare Quarterly, Shakespeare Bulletin, Literature/Film Quarterly, and Studies in English Literature. He has acted in and directed several productions of Shakespeare's comedies, including The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love's Labor's Lost, Much Ado About Nothing, Measure for Measure, Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and The Taming of the Shrew.

2025: Working on two scholarly articles about Patrick Somerville's HBO Max show Station Eleven, which is an adaptation of Emily St. John Mandel's novel of the same name. In the first essay, I explored the way in which the television series uses Shakespeare to help present a multicultural future through references to the use of Shakespeare in the original Star Trek. In the second essay, I examine how the television series incorporates the novel's nostalgia for the technological advances of modern times, lost in a global pandemic, by showing how the world must not simply seek a return to the past, but must instead adapt the cultural heritage of the past to reconcile with the circumstances of the present. 

Courses Taught

ENLT 122 Intro. to Drama (CL)
ENLT 136X FYS-Shakespeare One Play (FYS)
ENLT 220 Shakespeare (CL)
ENLT 231 Shakespeare's Comedies (CL)
ENLT 232 Shakespeare's Tragedies (CL)
ENLT 240 British Literature: Medieval and Renaissance (Area B-1)
ENLT 341 ST: Shakespeare (CL)
ENLT 343J Shakespeare Performed (CL)
ENLT 490 Senior Seminar