Contact Information
Dr. Laury Magnus
Professor, Department of Humanities
Phone:
1 (516) 726-5688
300 Steamboat Road
Kings Point, New York 11024
Business hours:
8:00am-4:30pm ET, M-F
Dr. Laury Magnus
Professor, Humanities
Year Started
1981
Education
- Ph.D. Modern Literature, Shakespeare, Chaucer The Graduate Center of CUNY
- M. Phil Modern Literature, Shakespeare, Chaucer The Graduate Center of CUNY
- B.A. Cum Laude English Literature Brooklyn College
Teaching Interests
- Shakespeare
- Text and Performance
- Modern and Renaissance Literature
- Literature and Film
- Public Speaking
- Art History
Research Interests
- Shakespeare
- Text and Performance
- Modern Literature
- Poetry and Poetics
- Russian Literature and Translation
Biography
Dr. Laury Magnus is Professor of English whose fields are Shakespeare and Modern Literature. She teaches world literature and composition courses and independent studies or electives in Shakespeare (text and performance), the literature of World War I, literature and film, art history, modern literature, drama, poetry, and public speaking. She particularly enjoys teaching Shakespeare and working through interpretative problems through scene staging and film discussion; likewise, she enjoys encouraging students' speaking, discussion, and interpretative skills, so critical to their intellectual development. As the current Humanities Department Sea Project coordinator at Kings Point, she oversees their readings at sea and coaching their humanities capstone project; this project synthesizes their experiences as mariners with their broader readings in literature and history and their analyses of leadership and the human community aboard ship.
Dr. Magnus's recent publications include her book about hearing and overhearing Shakespeare, entitled Who Hears in Shakespeare? Stage and Screen (co-edited with Walter Cannon) published by Fairleigh Dickinson University Press in 2012. She has also published a chapter on "Shakespeare on Film and Television" for the Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare (OUP) in 2012, and performance-oriented New Kittredge editions of Romeo and Juliet (co-edited with Bernice W. Kliman) The Taming of the Shrew, The Comedy of Errors and Measure for Measure. Her current projects are essays on Ophelia, Laertes, and Fortinbras, which she is writing for the online Shakespeare site Hamleworks.org.
Other Shakespeare publications have included articles/reviews on The Merchant of Venice (Literature/Film Quarterly), Hamlet (Connotations), many books and performance reviews for the Shakespeare Newsletter and College Literature, and an article on teaching The Taming of the Shrew (MLA). Her non-Shakespearean books include The Track of the Repetend (AMS Press), a work on repetition in modern poetry, and Common Ground (Scott, Foresman & Co.), and anthology of literature and essays she co-edited. She was also co-translator of Ivan Goncharov's The Precipice (Ardis Press), for which she wrote the critical introduction.
Dr. Magnus is a long-time Associate Member of the Columbia Shakespeare Seminar. She won an NEH Summer Institute Grant "Shakespeare's Playhouses: Indoor and Out," studying with international scholars on Shakespeare's stagecraft. She was thrilled to work and perform with actors on a replica of his indoor stage (The Blackfriars Playhouse, recreated in Staunton, Va.) and on London's Globe stage. She was also Director of the Arts and World Affairs Program, and Faculty Advisor to Hear This the student newspaper and member of The Mariners' Chorus for many years.
Dr. Magnus claims the distinction of being the first woman to have achieved the rank of full professor at Kings Point. Before arriving at USMMA in 1981, she taught at various colleges of the City University of New York, including Brooklyn, Queens, Lehman, John Jay, and Baruch Colleges.
Updated: Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Dr. Laury Magnus
