Vassar Drama Faculty

Denise A. Walen

• Associate Professor of Drama and Department Chair

Office: Vogelstein Center for Drama and Film 320
Phone: (845) 437-7548

Contact Denise Walen

Denise A. Walen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Drama and Department Chair at Vassar College where she has taught since 1996. She earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in Theater from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and concentrates her areas of teaching and research on dramatic literature and theory, theater history, and women’s studies. Dr. Walen focuses on early Modern drama and has directed Twelfth Night, As You Like It, and Aphra Behn’s The Feigned Courtesans, along with several other productions for the Department. She is the author of articles and reviews in Theatre History Studies, Theatre Survey, and Theatre Journal, and Shakespeare Quarterly as well as chapters in Women and Playwriting in Nineteenth Century Britain (Cambridge University Press, 1999) and Passing Performances: Queer Readings of Leading Players in American Theatre History (University of Michigan Press, 1998). Dr. Walen also served for several years as Performance Review editor for Theatre Journal. She is the author of Constructions of Female Homoeroticism in Early Modern Drama (Palgrave 2007).