• Kathryn Vomero Santos is a scholar of Shakespeare who studies the intersections of performance with the politics of language, empire, and race in the early modern period and in our contemporary moment. As a co-founder of the award-winning Borderlands Shakespeare Colectiva, she is invested in the public humanities and forms of community-engaged scholarship and teaching that sustain the arts, cultures, and languages of the U.S.–Mexico Borderlands. Her collaborative work has been supported by major grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Mellon Foundation.

    Santos is the author of Shakespeare in Tongues (Routledge, 2025) and the co-editor of several books, including The Bard in the Borderlands: An Anthology of Shakespeare Appropriations en La Frontera, Volumes 1 and 2 (AMCRS Press, 2023 and 2024); The Ethical Implications of Shakespeare in Performance and Appropriation (Edinburgh University Press, 2024); and Arthur Golding’s A Moral Fabletalk and Other Renaissance Fable Translations (Modern Humanities Research Association, 2017). She is currently working on a new book about the cultural history of Sycorax and her transmedial afterlives.

    Santos is a Trustee of the Shakespeare Association of America and a member of the Board of Directors for Humanities Texas. She also serves on the editorial boards of Shakespeare Quarterly, Shakespeare Bulletin, and ACMRS Press. She has worked as an academic advisor for The Public Theater in New York City and is the secretary of the Founding Board of Directors for the Friends of International Friendship Park.

    At Trinity, Santos teaches courses on Shakespeare and his afterlives, early modern British literature, translation studies, borderlands studies, critical race studies, and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. She regularly supervises undergraduate student research projects and is affiliated faculty in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Global Latinx Studies, and Women’s and Gender Studies.
     

    • Ph.D., English and American Literature, New York University
    • M.A., English and American Literature, New York University
    • B.A., English and Spanish, Syracuse University

    Books


    Edited Collections


    Scholarly Editions


    Articles

    • “‘Th’oppressor’s wrong,’ or, What’s Hamlet to the Borderlands?” Latino Studies 22 (2024): 353–75. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41276-024-00462-6.
    • “¿Shakespeare para todos?” Shakespeare Quarterly 73:1 (2022): 49–75. https://doi.org/10.1093/sq/quac044.
    • “Seeing Shakespeare: Narco Narratives and Neocolonial Appropriations of Macbeth in the U.S.–Mexico Borderlands.” Literature Compass 20:4 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1111/lic3.12636.
    • “The Stories We Tell and Sell about Early Modern Women’s Writing: Teaching Toward an Intersectional Feminist Public Humanities.” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 28:2 (2021): 117–125.
    • “‘Our language is the forest’: Landscapes of the Mother Tongue in David Greig’s Dunsinane.” Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 13:2 (2021). https://doi.org/10.18274/VQAW4191.
    • “‘Let me be th’interpreter’: Shakespeare and the Tongues of War.” Shakespeare Studies 48 (2020): 66–72.
    • “‘The knots within’: Translations, Tapestries, and the Art of Reading Backwards.” The Translator’s Voice in Early Modern Literature and History, edited by A.E.B. Coldiron, special issue of Philological Quarterly, 95:3/4 (Summer–Fall 2016): 343–57.


    Book Chapters 

    • “Early Modern Interpreters, Linguistic Labor, and the Logics of Race.” The Oxford Handbook of Travel, Identity, and Race in Early Modern England, 1550–1700, edited by Nandini Das. Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2026.
    • “Profit.” Logomotives: Words That Change the World, 1400–1700, edited by Marjorie Rubright and Stephen Spiess, 249–59. Edinburgh University Press, 2025.
    • “Cultural (Dis)inheritance and the Decline of Empire in The Prince’s Choice.” Shakespeare’s Afterlife in the Royal Collection: Dynasty, Ideology, and National Culture, edited by Sally Barnden, Gordon McMullan, Kate Retford, and Kirsten Tambling, 223–29. Oxford University Press, 2025.
    • “Re-Verse: Poetry in the Shakespeare Classroom” (co-authored with Jesus Montaño). Design and Discomfort: Teaching Shakespeare and Race, edited by Laura Turchi, 173–92. ACMRS Press, 2025.
    • “Healing in the Gap of Time: Resonance and Resilience in José Cruz González’s Invierno.” Shakespeare and the Poetics and Politics of Relevance, edited by Dympna Callaghan and Sophie Chiari, 211–26. Palgrave, 2024.
    • “Not-So-Ancient Grudges: Grounding Romeo and Juliet in the Histories of the U.S.–Mexico Borderlands.” Approaches to Teaching Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, edited by Joseph M. Ortiz, 146–52. Modern Language Association of America, 2024.
    • “Where Curriculum Meets Community: Teaching Borderlands Shakespeare in San Antonio” (co-authored with Katherine Gillen). Situating Shakespeare Pedagogy in Higher Education: Social Justice and Institutional Contexts, edited by Marissa Greenberg and Elizabeth Williamson, 111–25. Edinburgh University Press, 2024.
    • “Hijacking Shakespeare: Archival Absences, Textual Accidents, and Revisionist Repair in Aditi Brennan Kapil’s Imogen Says Nothing.” Shakespeare and Cultural Appropriation, edited by Vanessa I. Corredera, L. Monique Pittman, and Geoffrey Way, 161–75. Routledge, 2023.
    • “Antimonarchal Locusts: Translating the Grasshopper in the Aftermath of the English Civil Wars.” Lesser Living Creatures of the Renaissance, edited by Keith Botelho and Joseph Campana, 155–73. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2023.   
    • “‘Read[ing] Strange Matters’: Digital Approaches to Early Modern Transnational Intertextuality.” Shakespeare and Digital Pedagogy: Case Studies and Strategies, edited by Diana Henderson and Kyle Vitale, 38–48. Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2021.
    • “What Does the Wolf Say? Animal Language and Political Noise in Coriolanus” (co-authored with Liza Blake). The Routledge Handbook of Shakespeare and Animals, edited by Holly Dugan and Karen Raber, 150–62. Routledge, 2020.
    • “Hosting Language: Immigration and Translation in The Merry Wives of Windsor.” Shakespeare and Immigration, edited by Ruben Espinosa and David Ruiter, 59–72. Ashgate, 2014. 


    Other Essays

    • “Safiya Sinclair and the Poetry of Linguistic Rebellion.” To Hear Her Speak: Black Women and Shakespeare, edited by Patricia Akhimie. ACMRS Press, forthcoming 2026.
    • “After words, words, words: Hamlet on the Border.” Afterword for Histories of the Future: On Shakespeare and Thinking Ahead, edited by Carla Mazzio, 199–205. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024.
    • “From the Convention: Shakespeare and the Politics of Tradaptation” (co-authored with Katherine Gillen). PMLA 137:3 (2023): 715–20.  

    • Early Modern Literature and Culture
    • Translation and Interpreting Studies
    • Adaptation and Appropriation Studies
    • Borderlands and Latinx Studies
    • Premodern Critical Race Studies
    • Gender and Sexuality Studies
       

    • British Literature Beginnings to 1800
    • Decolonial Shakespeares
    • Absent Women in Shakespeare
    • Literature and Languages
    • Reading Race
    • Introduction to Gender Studies
    • Borders and Belonging: The Arts and Archives of Place

    Grants and Fellowships

    • Collaborative for Learning and Teaching Faculty Fellowship, Trinity University, 2025–2026
    • Mellon Foundation Grant, Building the Borderlands Shakespeare Colectiva, 2023–2026
    • Collaborative Research Grant, National Endowment for the Humanities, 2023–2024
    • Paul Oskar Kristeller Fellowship, Renaissance Society of America, 2022
    • Arden Shakespeare Fourth Series Fellowship, 2021–2023
    • Mellon Initiative Regional Research Development Grant, Trinity University, 2020
    • Folger Shakespeare Library Short-Term Fellowship, 2019
    • Public Humanities Faculty Fellowship, Trinity University Humanities Collective, 2019–2020
    • Gretchen C. Northrup Faculty Fellowship, Trinity University, 2019–2021
    • Folger Shakespeare Library and National Endowment for the Humanities Grant, Teaching Shakespeare to Undergraduates, 2016–2017
    • Wagenschein Foundation Research Enhancement Award for Gender Studies, TAMU–CC, 2016
    • TAMU Initiative for Digital Humanities, Media and Culture Grant, 2016
    • Francis Bacon Foundation Fellowship in Renaissance England, Henry E. Huntington Library, 2015
    • Renaissance Society of America Research Grant, 2014
    • James and Sylvia Thayer Short-Term Fellowship, UCLA Special Collections, 2012
    • Animal Studies Initiative Research Grant, New York University, 2012
    • Global Research Initiative Fellowship in London, New York University, 2012
    • Richardson Fellowship for Dramatic Literature, New York University, 2011

     

    Awards

    • Shakespeare Publics Award, Shakespeare Association of America, 2024
    • Early Career Faculty Award for Distinguished Research and Teaching, Trinity University, 2024
    • Jean Marie Richards Memorial Award for Excellence in English, Syracuse University, 2007
    • Jonathan Chayat Memorial Award, Syracuse University, 2007

    Trinity Service and Involvement

    • Faculty Advisory Committee, Women’s and Gender Studies
    • Faculty Advisory Committee, Global Latinx Studies
    • Faculty Member, Phi Beta Kappa, Epsilon of Texas Chapter
    • Faculty Advisor, Sigma Tau Delta, Trinity University Chapter
    • Faculty Mentor, Arts, Letters, and Enterprise Internship Program
    • Co-chair, Quality Enhancement Plan Topic Selection Committee
    • Vice President, American Association of University Professors, Trinity University Chapter
    • Co-director, Humanities Collective (2020–2024)

     

    Professional Service and Involvement

    • Board of Directors, Humanities Texas
    • Board of Trustees, Shakespeare Association of America
    • Editorial Board, Shakespeare Quarterly
    • Editorial Board, Shakespeare Bulletin
    • Editorial Board, ACMRS Press
    • Affiliate, Tsikinya-Chaka Centre, University of the Witwatersrand
    • Early Modern Section Editor, The Sundial (2021–2023)
    • Performance Reviews Editor, Shakespeare Bulletin (2020–2023)
    • Executive Committee, Translation Studies Forum, Modern Language Association (2020–2025)
       

    Community Service

    • Board of Directors, Friends of International Friendship Park
    • Corpus Christi Immigration Coalition (2016–2018)