Carla Della Gatta

Carla Della Gatta is a theatre historian and performance theorist who examines ethnic and bilingual theatre through dramaturgy and aurality. She built and maintains the only archive of Latinx theatrical adaptations, LatinxShakespeares.Org. She is the author of Latinx Shakespeares: Staging U.S. Intracultural Theater (Michigan, 2023) and co-editor of Shakespeare and Latinidad (Edinburgh UP, 2021). She is currently co-editing The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Sound (Cambridge, 2027).

Dr. Della Gatta is the Director of the MA/PhD programs for TDPS. She is also the Director of Honors Humanities at University of Maryland. She is Affiliate Faculty in American Studies and in English. She is a representative to the Folger Institute Executive Committee, and in 2025, she was honored at the Maryland Research Excellence Celebration.

She has worked as a translator for the theatre, a dramaturg, and she leads casting workshops for theaters and entertainment companies. Della Gatta collaborated with the UCLA Comedia in Translation and Performance Working Group to translate Ana Caro’s The Courage to Right a Woman’s Wrongs in 2019 (Juan de la Cuesta Press, 2021). Della Gatta dramaturged the Folger Theatre’s 2024 production of Romeo and Juliet and worked as was an academic advisor for the Public Humanities Initiative at The Public Theater in 2019. Her public scholarship can be found online in podcasts, essays, program notes, interviews, and panel conversations with Shakespeare Theatre Company, Baltimore Center Stage, HowlRound, Shakespeare Center Los Angeles, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Classic Stage Company, Shakespeare St. Louis, the Folger Shakespeare Library, The Sol Project, and Victory Gardens Theater. See www.carladellagatta.com
 

Areas of Specialization:
Latinx theatre, Shakespeare and Renaissance drama, LGBTQ theatre, Spanish Golden Age drama, adaptation theory, theatre history and historiography. 

Current Editorial, Advisory, and Theatre Boards:

• Editorial Board, Shakespeare Studies, 2026-present.
• Board of Directors, Glass Canon Theatre Company, 2025-present.
• Executive Council, Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society (MRDS), 
  2024-present.
• Digital Humanities Editor, The Fornés Institute, 2022 – present.
• Advisory Board, Shakespeare and Social Justice series, Arden Shakespeare, 2021-present.
• Advisory Board, Shakespeare Survey, 2021-present.
• Steering Committee Member, Latinx Theatre Commons, 2017 – present.

Representative Publications/Research Activities:

Books:
Latinx Shakespeares: Staging U.S. Intracultural Theater (open-access), University of Michigan Press, 2023. 
Honorable Mention, International Latino Book Awards
Finalist, George Freedley Memorial Award, Theatre Library Association
Finalist, Barnard Hewitt Award, American Society for Theatre Research

Shakespeare and Latinidad. Edinburgh University Press, 2021. Edited with Trevor Boffone.

Digital Public History:
Latinx Shakespeares.Org. Created, built, and manage an online archive of Latinx theatre adaptation.
Silver Medal, International Latino Book Awards

Representative Recent Essays: 

“Dramaturgy, Phenomenology, and Talmudic Thinking: Methods for a Critical Mixed-Race Studies Approach to Shakespeare,” Shakespearean International Yearbook, Special Edition on Mixed Race Shakespeares, Vol.1, 2026. 201-22.

“The Performing Arts as a Method for Public Humanities,” Public Humanities 1, Special Edition “Public Humanities Across the Disciplines,” 2025. E136, 1-7.

“The State of the Art,” Measure for Measure: A Critical Reader, eds. John Jowett and Sarah Olive, Arden Bloomsbury, 2025. 53-72.

“The Epistemic Disobedience of Latinx Shakespeares,” in Latinx Literature in Transition: 1444-1886, Vol. I, eds. Kenya C. Dworkin y Méndez and Elisa Sampson Vera Tudela. Cambridge UP, 2025. 319-340.

“Documentation,” María Irene Fornés - In Context, eds. Anne García-Romero and Brian Eugenio Herrera, Cambridge UP, 2025. 298-307.

“Ethnic/Ethnicity,” Logomotives: Words That Change the Premodern World, eds. Marjorie Rubright and Stephen Spiess, Edinburgh UP, 2025, 146-55.

“Material Bodies and Object Vitality: Octavio Solis’ Don Quixote and Quixote Nuevo,” The Routledge Companion to Latinx Theatre and Performance, eds. Noe Montez and Olga Sanchez Saltveit. Routledge, 2024. 299-307.

“Casting Shakespeare Today,” The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Race, ed. Patricia Akhimie, Oxford UP, 2024. 477-489.

“Shakespeare and Race: The Oral Histories,” The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Race, ed. Patricia Akhimie, Oxford UP, 2024. 30,000 words.

“The Oral Histories: Outtakes,” The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Race, ed. Patricia Akhimie, Oxford UP, 2024. 1-26. 12,000 words. Available
open access.

“Wrighting Theater History,” Shakespeare Studies, ‘Forum: Shakespearean Second Acts,’ Vol. 52, 2024. 27-36.

“Accruing Gravitas, Or Why There Isn’t a Latino King Lear (Yet),” Shakespeare, Special Edition on Inessential Shakespeare, 2024. 580-95.

“From Metaphor to Metonym: Shakespearean Recognition in the U.S. University,” in Multicultural Shakespeare, Special Edition on ‘The Origins of Shakespeare Studies,’ Vol. 27, No. 42 (2023): 179-94.

Representative Recent Public Work

“Shakespeare’s Radical Stage,” ArtsEmerson / The Point, 2026.

“Latinx Shakespeares in the 20th Century,” Shakespeare & Beyond, Folger Shakespeare Library, 2025.

“Bilingual Shakespeares,” Shakespeare & Beyond, Folger Shakespeare Library, 2025.

“Dramaturgical Marginalia from the 2025 Fornés Institute Symposium,” HowlRound, 2025.

“Executive Summary: Latinx Theatre Commons Wallace Planning Grant Concept Paper for Archiving Latine Theatre,” HowlRound, 2024.

“Staging Latinx Shakespeares with Dr. Carla Della Gatta,” The Theatre History Podcast , 2024.

“Bilingual Shakespeares as a Pedagogy of Ethics,” Teaching Shakespeare Magazine, Special Edition: “Shakespeare, Race, and Pedagogy,” 2024. 16-17.

“Race and the Classics: An Argument for Empathy,” co-authored with Harvey Young in Theatre Topics Vol. 34, No. 2, July 2024. E11-E14.

“Play as Process at the Latinx Theatre Commons Designer and Director Colaboratorio,” HowlRound, 2023.

“Making Difference,” Program Note for West Side Story, Lyric Opera of Chicago, 2023.

“Justice and Revolution,” Program Note for Measure for Measure, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, 2022.

Representative Fellowships, Grants, and Awards:

• Research Fellowship, American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR), 2025.
• ARHU Faculty Advancement Grant, 2025.
• Wallace Foundation Research Implementation Grant awarded to the Latinx Theatre Commons, 2024.
• Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI) Online Scholarship, Renaissance Society of America, 2023.
• Susan Snyder Fellow, Folger Shakespeare Library Fellowship, 2022-23.
• Renaissance Society of America (RSA) Diversity Grant, 2022.
• First Year Assistant Professor (FYAP) Grant, Florida State University, 2020.
• Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Fellowship, The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation (now Citizens and Scholars), 2018-19.
• Folger Shakespeare Library Short-Term Fellowship, 2018-19.
• The Mellon School of Theater & Performance Research, Harvard University Summer Session, 2018.
• New York Public Library Short Term Fellowship, 2017.
• American Society for Theatre Research Targeted Area Research Award, 2016.
• J. Leeds Barroll Dissertation Prize, Shakespeare Association of America, 2016.