Dr. Hugh Grady, a preeminent Shakespearean scholar who taught English literature and writing at Arcadia University for 27 years, has been named professor emeritus at the University. Grady, who retired from Arcadia following the 2013-14 academic year, is commended for his dedication to teaching, his extraordinary scholarship in the field of literature, and his years of service to Arcadia.

Grady began teaching at Arcadia in 1987. He taught undergraduate and graduate courses in writing, literature, and critical theory, and organized and instructed the senior Capstone course in English, familiarizing students with literary theory and helping them develop their undergraduate theses. Grady, who also chaired the English department, was promoted to full professor in 1999.

Grady has authored several books on Shakespeare and Renaissance literature, including Shakespeare and Impure Aesthetics (2009), Shakespeare, Machiavelli, and Montaigne: Power and Subjectivity from “Richard II” to “Hamlet” (2002), Shakespeare’s Universal Wolf: Postmodernist Studies in Early Modern Reification (1994), andThe Modernist Shakespeare: Critical Texts in a Material World (1995). He also has published more than 30 articles in journals and anthologies, coedited Shakespeare and the Urgency of Now: Criticism and Theory in the 21st Century (2013), and edited and contributed to Empson, Wilson Knight, Barber, Kott: Great Shakespeareans (2012), an anthology of critical essays focusing on Shakespeare’s reception by the major modern critics.

“I am honored to receive this distinction from the University and President Christensen and look forward to a continued relationship with the Arcadia community,” said Grady. “I plan an active retirement of continued scholarship, writing, and occasional part-time teaching in the future. Arcadia has been a big part of my life for the last 27 years, and I have many fond memories of working and teaching here.”

After receiving a bachelor’s degree in English from Fordham University, Grady spent a year volunteering with Americorps VISTA. He briefly taught high school French and English before pursuing a master’s degree in English and a doctorate in comparative literature from the University of Texas at Austin. Following his work as a senior assistant editor for the anthology Shakespearean Criticism, Grady taught English at Temple University before joining Arcadia.

In 1990 and 2004, Grady won the Ellington Beavers Faculty Award for Intellectual Inquiry at Arcadia, which is designed to encourage and recognize faculty inquiry in the scholarly and creative realms. He was named Arcadia Professor of the Year for the 2001-02 school year, and in 2004, he was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend for research.