Royce Best
Lecturer
Royce Best
Lecturer
Bio
Dr. Royce Best is a Lecturer in the Department of Liberal Studies. He teaches writing and English courses, focusing on deaf and hard-of-hearing students. He is also often involved with Shakespeare productions at NTID’s Department of Performing Arts. His current research interests focus on Shakespeare studies, disability studies, deaf studies, and accessible pedagogy.
Dr. Best completed his PhD in English literature at the Johns Hopkins University with a dissertation entitled "Crip Estrangement: Shakespeare, Disability, Metatheatre." He also holds MAs in English literature from Johns Hopkins University and the University of Tennessee and a BA in English and Classical Civilization from Ohio University.
Before arriving at NTID, Dr. Best worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the University Writing Program at Hopkins, teaching a writing course on “Shakespeare’s Richard III and Disability.” He has also run a workshop entitled “Accessible Teaching: Some Places to Start” for several different departments.
Select Scholarship
Peer-Reviewed Publications
"Making Obesity Fat: Crip Estrangement in Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1." Disability Studies Quarterly 39.4 (2019): n.p. https://doi.org/10.18061/dsq.v39i4.7149
"'Write as I bid you': Eruptive Baroque Aesthetics in Wycherley’s The Country Wife." Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research 31.1 (2016): 39-62.
"'And her wings fall from her and she drops to the ground': Reading Eliot's Mr. Casaubon through Benjamin Jowett's Phaedrus." The George Eliot Review 44 (2013): 7-15.
Revise and Re-Submit: "A Dumb Show Literalized: Crip Estrangement in Titus Andronicus." Shakespeare Quarterly. 31 m.s. pages.
Review Essays
"Some Current Publications." Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, 1660-1700 38.1 (2014): 95-104.
Rev. of The Primitive, The Aesthetic, and the Savage: An Enlightenment Problematic, Tony C. Brown. Journal for Early Modern Culture Studies 13.4 (2013): 166-172.
Invited Presentations
"Accessible Teaching: Can Ideas from the Classroom Benefit the Workplace?" Diversity and Inclusion Working Group. Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). Johns Hopkins University. Online. 15 Oct. 2022.
"Accessible Teaching: Some Places to Start." Center for Teaching Excellence and Innovation (CTEI). Johns Hopkins University. Online. 6 May 2022.
"Accessible Teaching: Some Places to Start." University Writing Program. Johns Hopkins University. Online. 12 Nov. 2021.
"A Dumb Show Literalized: Crip Estrangement in Titus Andronicus." Department of English. St. John Fisher College. 1 Apr. 2021.
"Disability Activism and the History of Self-Advocacy." Advocates for Disability Awareness GBM. Johns Hopkins University. 4 Nov. 2020.
Conference Presentations
"'This nothing’s more than matter': Ophelia, madness, and m?tis." Renaissance Society of America. Online. 21 Apr. 2021. Conference. (Re-scheduled from Apr. 2020 due to COVID-19 pandemic)
"'spherical, like a globe': Estranging Lucy Negro in The Comedy of Errors." Alexander Grass Humanities Institute. Online. 26 Mar. 2021. AGHI Fellows Presentation.
"'Madness in Great Ones': Dissembling Black Madness in Duke Ellington's Hamlet." Modern Language Society. Online. 8 January 2021. Conference.
"Heard but not seen: Undermining Obesity in The Comedy of Errors. " Renaissance Society of America. Toronto. 18 Mar. 2019. Conference.
"A Dumb Show Literalized: Crip Estrangement in Titus Andronicus." English Department Journal Club. Baltimore. 1 November 2018. Journal club.
"Aesthetics of Fat in 1 Henry IV." English Graduate Student Showcase. Baltimore. 7 May 2018. Department showcase.
"'Let's Have a Kiki': Didactic Communal Theatre in Restoration Comedy at the Flea." Southeast American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies (SEASECS). Knoxville. 1 March 2014. Conference.
"'Write as I bid you': Mr. Pinchwife's Aesthetic Baroque Eruption in The Country Wife." SEASECS. Charleston. 1 March 2013. Conference.
Seminar Participation
Shakespeare Association of America Seminar, "Shakespeare's Other Disability Plays," Jacksonville, FL, April 2022.
Shakespeare Association of America Seminar, "Disability and its Intersections," Washington, D.C., April 2019.
Folger Shakespeare Institute Seminar, "Research Methodologies," Washington, D.C., Spring 2015.