Outstanding Scholarship Award

Christina Gutierrez-Dennehy - Theatre & Dance

Christina Gutierrez-Dennehy is an associate professor of Theatre. She is a theatre historian, a director, and a theatre educator, and her research often focuses on the intersection of artistic practice and historiography. Gutierrez-Dennehy holds a Ph.D. in performance as public practice from the University of Texas at Austin and an M.A. in theatre history from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Her latest book, “Masquing Blackness: Shakespeare, Caliban, and Jonson,” published by Routledge in 2025, is a dual examination of the historical context of Blackness in “The Tempest” and of the post-Covid fascination with the play on American stages. Her first book, “Like A King: Casting Shakespeare's Histories for Citizens and Subjects” (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2020) is an examination of constructions of kingship in Shakespeare's history plays, particularly in cases of racially conscious, cross-gendered and/or doubled casting. Additionally, she edited the volume “Kingship, Madness, and Masculinity on the Early Modern Stage: Mad World, Mad Kings” (Routledge, 2021). Her work has also appeared in journals including Theatre Topics, Theatre Annual, Shakespeare, Shakespeare Bulletin, and Humanities. Gutierrez-Dennehy is also a freelance director and the artistic director of the 7 Towers Theatre Company in Austin, Texas.