Gina M. Di Salvo (PhD, Northwestern University) is Associate Professor of Theatre and Associate Director of The Marco Institute. An interdisciplinary scholar, Dr. Di Salvo’s research focuses on matters of performance and culture in medieval and early modern England. Her first monograph, The Renaissance of the Saints After Reform (Oxford University Press, 2023), examines the English saint play during and after the Middle Ages. Current research interests include true crime as an early dramatic genre, the use of theatrics to enact protest in seventeenth-century England, and the contemporary engagement with Shakespeare’s First Folio. Dr. Di Salvo is also a professional dramaturg who supports the work of the Clarence Brown Theatre through research, talkbacks, program notes, and production dramaturgy. As a dramaturg, she has worked with Sideshow, Rivendell, Strawdog, and The Gift in Chicago, as well as Plan-B in Salt Lake City. Dr. Di Salvo has received fellowships from the AAUW, the Huntington Library, and the Chicago Humanities Festival. She was a 2018-19 faculty fellow at the University of Tennessee Humanities Center and the 2021-23 Paul L. Soper Professor in the Department of Theatre. With Prof. Heather Hirschfeld (English), she convened the 2023 Marco Symposium, “The Canon of Shakespeare at 400.” Dr. Di Salvo teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in theatre history and criticism, research methods, and dramaturgy, and she serves regularly on MFA and PhD committees in Art, English, and Theatre.

Select articles + essays

“Signs of Liveness: Blazing Stars in Renaissance Drama.” In Early Modern Liveness, ed. Danielle Rosvally and Donovan Sherman. London: Bloomsbury/Arden, 2023. 196-216.

“‘A Virgine and a Martyr both’: The Turn to Hagiography in the Reformation History Play.” Renaissance and Reformation/Renaissance et Réforme 41.4 (2018): 133-167.

*Awarded the 2018 Natalie Zemon Davis Prize*

“Saints’ Lives and Shoemakers’ Holidays: The Circulation of ‘The Gentle Craft’ and the Wells  Cordwainers’ Pageant of 1613.” Early Theatre 19.2 (2016): 119-138.

“The Framing of the Shrew.” In Chicago Shakespeare Theater: Suiting the Action to the Word, ed. Regina Buccola and Peter Kanelos. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2013. 117-39.