About

Katherine Scheil is a Professor in the Department of English at the University of Minnesota. Her work involves the creation and transmission of knowledge about literature and its related fields. She teaches students to read and analyze texts, to write in scholarly, creative, and public ways, and to apply their knowledge and skills for the benefit of many communities. Her role includes engaging with diverse research interests and contributing to the academic community through teaching and scholarship.

Research topics

• History
• Art
• Sociology
• Literature
• Philosophy
• Gender studies

Selected publications

• Women and Circuits of Tourism in Stratford-upon-Avon

  Amsterdam University Press eBooks · 2025-07-23

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Women and Circuits of Tourism in Stratford-upon-Avon

  2025-07-10

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  <p xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" class="first" dir="auto" id="d1434622e124">This chapter examines the social, familial, and commercial networks of women who pioneered the Shakespeare tourist industry in Stratford-upon-Avon, from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. Frequently described as “caretakers,” this title belies the significant contributions of the many women who initiated and performed the practices of tourism in Stratford-upon-Avon, while juggling domestic and financial responsibilities, and crafted legacies of economic opportunities for later generations of women. From Shakespeare’s Birthplace to Anne Hathaway’s Cottage, the major Shakespeare properties in Stratford-upon-Avon owe their heritage of tourism to women who recognized the power of the “Shakespeare brand,” the expectations of tourists related to Shakespeare, and the potential for lucrative income based on a growing field of what is now called heritage tourism.

  PublisherDOI

• 7. Women and Circuits of Tourism in Stratford-upon-Avon

  Amsterdam University Press eBooks · 2025-08-20

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This chapter examines the social, familial, and commercial networks of women who pioneered the Shakespeare tourist industry in Stratford-upon-Avon, from the eighteenth to the twentieth century.Frequently described as "caretakers," this title belies the significant contributions of the many women who initiated and performed the practices of tourism in Stratford-upon-Avon, while juggling domestic and financial responsibilities, and crafted legacies of economic opportunities for later generations of women.From Shakespeare's Birthplace to Anne Hathaway's Cottage, the major Shakespeare properties in Stratford-upon-Avon owe their heritage of tourism to women who recognized the power of the "Shakespeare brand," the expectations of tourists related to Shakespeare, and the potential for lucrative income based on a growing field of what is now called heritage tourism.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Introduction

  2024-04-12

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  John Watkins, the inspiration for this volume, is a major literary and cultural historian whose work moves effortlessly across geographical, temporal, and political borders, allowing texts and figures of history to haunt later eras and raise new questions. He has played a generative and generous role in developing a historicist methodology and a scholarly community that both place multiple pasts and presents in active dialogue with one another. Early Modern Improvisations: Essays on History and Literature in Honor of John Watkins pays tribute to the far-reaching influence of Watkins on the fields of history and literature and on the people with whom he has come into contact over a career that spans more than 30 years.

  PublisherDOI

• <i>Shakespeare’s Syndicate: The First Folio, Its Publishers, and the Early Modern Book Trade</i>. By <scp>Ben Higgins</scp>

  Shakespeare Quarterly · 2024-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Journal Article Shakespeare's Syndicate: The First Folio, Its Publishers, and the Early Modern Book Trade. By Ben Higgins Get access Shakespeare's Syndicate: The First Folio, Its Publishers, and the Early Modern Book Trade. By Ben Higgins. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. Illus. Pp. xviii + 320. Katherine Scheil Katherine Scheil kscheil@umn.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4104-9639 Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Shakespeare Quarterly, quae021, https://doi.org/10.1093/sq/quae021 Published: 14 June 2024

  PublisherDOI

• Afterword

  2024-04-12

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  In 1967, the composer William Walton was commissioned to write a new piece for the San Francisco Symphony. Rather than create something from scratch, Walton asked permission to use a theme from Benjamin Britten's Piano Concerto. Entitled “Improvisations on an Impromptu of Benjamin Britten,” Walton's work has been praised not only for paying tribute to Britten but also for moving in new directions, described as “a fascinating product of the contact between two musical minds.” 1 In the spirit of Walton's “Improvisations,” Early Modern Improvisations brings together new voices around old texts, new methodologies for old themes, and fresh visions for a “theme and variations” on the harmony between history and literature. By viewing literature and history as both improvisational spaces, we allow them to be not separate enterprises but rather complementary modes of inquiry, an approach to historicism that is less about travel (time-travel or otherwise) to urge a historicism that generates something to speak both in and with the present.

  PublisherDOI

• Early Modern Improvisations

  2024-04-12

  book1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Women Talk Back to Shakespeare: Contemporary Adaptations and Appropriations by Jo Eldridge Carney (Routledge, 2022)

  Borrowers and Lenders The Journal of Shakespeare Appropriations · 2023

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Art
  • Gender studies
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Father Shakespeare

  2023-01-01 · 1 citations

  other1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Forgotten Shakespeare

  2022-06-22

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  For nineteenth-century travelers to Stratford-upon-Avon, the tourist experience usually entailed a trip to Shakespeare’s Birthplace, to his grave at Holy Trinity Church, and to his wife’s family home, Anne Hathaway’s Cottage. As part of the journey to the Cottage, many travelers stopped at the nearby Shakespeare Tavern in Shottery, for a respite and refreshment. The Shakespeare Tavern in Shottery, in existence from the 1840s through the 1870s, acted as a repository of Shakespeariana and a site of nostalgic evocation. As late as 1910, The Shakespeare Tavern was one of three pencil sketches on display at Shakespeare’s Birthplace, along with a sketch of the Birthplace itself and Anne Hathaway’s Cottage. Such an immersive tourist experience no longer exists, of course, but the traces of the Shakespeare Tavern reveal the desires of nineteenth-century tourists for communion with the spirit of Shakespeare, specifically the “love-sick swain” of rural Warwickshire.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Randall Martin

  University of New Brunswick

  7 shared

• Graham Holderness

  University of Hertfordshire

  4 shared

• Linda Shenk

  3 shared

• Randall V. Martin

  Washington University in St. Louis

  3 shared

• Paul Edmondson

  2 shared

• David Riggs

  1 shared

• Stanley Wells

  Shakespeare Birthplace Trust

  1 shared

• Werner Sollors

  Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

  1 shared

Education

• PhD, English

  University of Toronto

  1995

• MA, English

  University of Toronto

  1990

• BA, English and Music

  Florida State University

  1989

Awards & honors

• University of Minnesota Outstanding Service Award (2025)
• CLA Career Readiness Award (2024)
• Scholar of the College, College of Liberal Arts, University…
• Award for Outstanding Contributions to Postbaccalaureate, Gr…
• Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Minnesota, Fac…