Claire Sommers’ research and teaching focus on early modern literature and drama, classical literature and its reception, theater and performance studies, adaptation studies, and critical theory.
Dr. Sommers’ research reframes the early modern reception of the classics in order to yield new insights into contemporary theoretical discourses. Her recently submitted book manuscript Chimeras, Centaurs, and Satyrs: Creating Hybrid Texts in Antiquity and Early Modern England recovers an often overlooked connotation of the ancient Greek word hybris to argue that hybridity functioned as a mode of metatextual engagement and figure of hermeneutic innovation in classical and early modern literature. By examining the depiction of multiform creatures in ancient political, scientific, geographic, and philosophic treatises, Dr. Sommers rejects the common association of hybris with violence, corruption, and shame and instead centers an often overlooked but equally valid connotation of the concept: surpassing human limitations. Her study draws on this revised understanding of hybris to designate a new literary classification called “hybrid texts,” works that exhibit their composite nature in four registers: they pivot around composite creatures such as the satyr and centaur; they emphasize the indeterminacy of linguistic meaning; they integrate several media including performance, verse, music, and the visual arts; and most significantly, they synthesize genres by enacting a shift from tragedy to comedy. With their demonstration of the composite’s capacity to abrogate constraint, these works assert the hybrid as a vehicle of creative transcendence.
Dr. Sommers' current research project Drama Queens: Cleopatra Stars as Elizabeth I, inspired by the eponymous course that she teaches, examines 16th and 17th century English theatrical interpretations of Cleopatra to argue that these dramatic versions of the Egyptian queen functioned as an alternate history of Elizabeth. Her study shows that these dramas juxtapose not only the annexation of Egypt with the emergence of the British empire but also the inconsistent portrayal of Cleopatra with the more assured regulation of Elizabeth’s iconography. By drawing on contemporary celebrity studies, Dr. Sommers asserts that early modern dramatists acribe these fluctuations in Cleopatra’s portrayal to her various assignations and, in so doing, conflate Elizabeth’s preservation of her virginity with the preservation of her legacy. At the same time, this study shows that Cleopatra’s shifting interpretation enabled her to act as a figuration of Elizabeth, which in turn allowed early modern playwrights to examine the British monarch without disrupting the image that she had so meticulously created. Drama Queens thus posits that the deployment of Cleopatra as a theatrical cipher for Elizabeth is itself a testament to the proficiency with which the English queen constructed her own celebrity status.
Dr. Sommers encourages her students to see writers as readers who adapted older works to yield new insights into their own era and charges her classes to read earlier texts in order to better understand their own world and lived experiences. She teaches a wide variety of classes at WashU including the special topics courses “Drama Queens: Cleopatra in Elizabethan England,” “Revision and Revival: Stages of Change in Theatrical Performance,” “Shakespeare: Page to Stage to Screen and Everything in Between,” “From Temples to Tik Tok: Celebrities and Stardom in Historical Practice,” “It’s Broadway Baby! The Magic and Making of the Musical,” and “Shakespeare: The Godly and the Grotesque” in addition to the foundational surveys “Early Texts and Contexts” and “Introduction to Theater and Performance Studies.” She also teaches the Ampersand course “Shakespeare’s Globe: All the World’s a Stage” and is the faculty advisor for its accompanying “Shakespeare’s Globe” summer study abroad program in London and Stratford-upon-Avon.
Dr. Sommers is focused extensively on generating undergraduate engagement and enrollment for both of her departments and currently serves as the Director of Undergraduate Studies of Drama. She is also the faculty advisor for the English Honor Society Sigma Tau Delta and the chapter founder and faculty advisor for the Theatre Honor Society Alpha Psi Omega. Outside of WashU, Dr. Sommers is the current chair of the Modern Language Association’s Delegate Assembly Organization Committee and previously served as the Exhibits and Professional Development Coordinator for the Northeast Modern Language Association. Before arriving at WashU, she created and served as Deputy Director of the Critical Theory Certificate at The Graduate Center, CUNY. Her work has been published by Renaisance Drama, Arion, and Routledge.
