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On September 1, 2021, W.B. Worthen, Alice Brady Pels Professor in the Arts and Chair of Department of Theatre, published an article in the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, titled “Undeadness.” The work takes up a question in the theatrical and extra theatrical categories of performance in the early modern period: “What does it mean to think about embodiment without bodies?”
Professor Worthen explores actions assigned to performers in the early modern period and how writing-as-algorithms and known bodily practices are used to assess commodified embodiment in a broader historical sense. His findings suggest that this impulsive use of embodiment in plays reflects the anxious behavioral repertoire of the early modern period.