As an advocacy speaker and a teacher, Alexa Alice Joubin has spoken on diversity, equity, and inclusion as well as on critical race and gender studies on Capitol Hill during a congressional briefing and in such venues as museums in the US and Switzerland, The Washington Post, The Economist, NPR, BBC, CBC, Voice of America, Edinburgh Festival, PEN America World Voices Festival on Gender and Power, Hay Festival (UK), Stratford Festival (Canada), British Embassy in Washington, DC, Shakespeare Birthplace Trust podcast, Foreign Policy, Penta, Folger Shakespeare Library podcast, Fundación Shakespeare Argentina, Royal Shakespeare Company Residency Program, Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, DC film festival, Pittsburgh’s Screenshot film festival, and other media outlets in the US, UK, Brazil, China, Japan, Korea, Australia, and elsewhere.
Learn more on GWU Media Relations‘ website on humanities and arts experts.

Focusing on “Shakespeare in a Changing World” in the wake of the pandemic’s great interruption, this conference will ask how the study and performance of Shakespearean theatre might respond to the rapid and very real changes we are witnessing, while also investigating the relationship of this theatre to the similarly rapid changes of Shakespeare’s time. Alexa Alice Joubin will be giving the plenary lecture. The other two plenary speakers are Antoni Cimolino (Artistic Director, Stratford Festival) and Brian Cummings (University of York). The Shakespearean Theatre Conference is a joint venture of the University of Waterloo and the Stratford Festival, and brings together scholars and practitioners to talk about how performance influences scholarship and vice versa. The Festival has announced a 2022 season that includes Hamlet, Richard III, All’s Well That Ends Well (the last two in the beautiful new Tom Patterson Theatre), and Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman, as well as two world premières: Hamlet-911, by Ann-Marie MacDonald, and 1939, by Jani Lauzon and Kaitlyn Riordan.
Gender expression that does not match prevailing gender norms is a recurring motif in Shakespeare’s plays. Because the Western canon has historically been given various forms of moral authority, Shakespeare has been used by trans-identified performers and feminists as a tool to deconstruct the gender binary and to challenge the institutionalized cis-sexism. Recent studies have shown that trans identities are far from an exclusively recent phenomenon.
NEH Institute on Transforming Shakespeare’s Tragedies: Adaptation, Education, and Diversity
Weber State University and Utah Shakespeare Festival, July 10-27, 2022
The 2022 National Endowment for the Humanities summer institute is designed to help high school teachers integrate adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays into their curricula, with an emphasis on Hamlet and Othello. Participants will study a variety of adaptations, including films, video games, graphic novels, stage performances, music, and young adult novels. We will emphasize diversity through pedagogical approaches that help students connect key Shakespearean themes (such as race, gender, and power) with their own lived experiences.
Society for Renaissance Studies Book Launch: Shakespeare and East Asia
Friday, February 5, 2021, 12:00 pm EST
Full video.
How did Akira Kurosawa’s films influence Steven Spielberg’s and George Lucas’s works, including the Star Wars? How do actors reposition their racialized bodies on stage and on screen? How do Korean transgender cinema and East Asian feminism transform gender identities in Shakespeare? Bringing film and theatre studies together, this book sheds new light on the two major genres in a comparative context and reveals deep connections among Asian and Anglophone performances.
Full video here.
Alexa Alice Joubin and playwright Kate Hennig discuss literary star-cross’d lovers spanning the globe and different eras, as well as the politics of these romances within their cultures.
TV, Radio, and Media Interviews
An excerpt of a longer interview sponsored by the Japanese Ministry of Education, January 2023. ::: YouTube Video
CBC Canadian Broadcasting Company program recorded at Stratford Festival in Ontario, 2023
November 2020 ::: Video on YouTube
Tuesday, May 11, 2021
CBC Radio-Canada, November 3, 2021
GW Hatchet September 11, 2023
Wednesday, March 24, 2021
February 23, 2022
Radio France Internationale, October 11, 2022 ::: Reprinted in Quarto (Shakespeare Theatre Association) Spring/Summer 2023, p. 5 [PDF]
The American Journal of Chinese Studies 28.2 (October, 2021): 115-130.
YouTube, November 5, 2021; co-hosted by SCREENSHOT film festival and University of Pittsburgh Asian Studies
The Asian Connection: Newsletter of Sigur Center for Asian Studies, George Washington University, Fall 2018
Japanese Ministry of Education, January 2021. Watch the 90-minute interview on YouTube
through the Speaking of Shakespeare channel.
The Shakespeare Standard, May 28, 2014 (by Jeffrey Kahan)
The Shakespeare Standard, March 9, 2013, by Colleen Kennedy
The Shakespeare Standard, February 16, 2013, by Colleen Kennedy
Oxford University Press YouTube

Past
Argentina Ministry of Heath, Chamber of Deputies, Cultural Studies and Gender Association, and Universidad Nacional de Catamarca, September 27, 2023 ::: A conference in celebration of Shakespeare’s First Folio [news story]
Dayapuram Arts and Science College for Women, Kerala, India, June 8, 2023 [Video Recording]
George Washington University, April 14, 2023 [Official Website]
January 18, 2023 at 3 pm eastern time in person and on Zoom (hybrid event). Learn more on GW Digital Humanities Institute’s webpage.
September 7, 2022. A TED-style 10-minute presentation at George Washington University
April 9, 2022 in Jacksonville, Florida ::: Alexa Alice Joubin serves as the discussant
April 14, 2022. Video recording on YouTube. Transcript on MIT.
George Washington University, October 6, 2022 :::: Lecture Slides
Stratford Festival, Ontario, Canada, July 23, 2023 ::: YouTube
8th Annual Diversity Summit, George Washington University, March 2, 2023
5th Annual Diversity Summit, George Washington University, November 7, 2019
Stratford Festival, Stratford, Ontario, Canada, July 23, 2023
The Shakespearean Theatre Conference, Stratford Festival and University of Waterloo, Canada, June 15-18, 2022
Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, July 20, 2022
Video recording available. New York University (NYU) in Shanghai, Center for Global Asia, November 11, 2021 at 8:30 pm in Shanghai; 7:30 am in New York; RSVP here.
Thursday, October 7, 2021. Virtual event online. Register here.
Thursday, May 27, 2021, 10:00 am PDT
Monday, March 21, 2022, hosted by Tomodachi MetLife in Japan
Washington, D.C., 10:15-11:30 am, Friday, January 7, 2022; registration link
Washington, D.C., April 18, 2019
April 18, 2022, University of California Santa Barbara
Sunday, March 6, 2022 at 2 pm in Dorothy Betts Marvin Theatre. Book your ticket here.
Marburg, Friday, January 28, 2022. Register on the conference website.
Society of Sinophone Studies Thursday March 10, 2022 at 3 pm EST; video recording on YouTube
Blackfriar’s Hall, University of Oxford, December 3, 2021; video recording on YouTube and Georgetown‘s website
September 16, 2021
April 18, 2022 ::: University of California Santa Barbara
Friday, January 9, 2022 ::: San Diego Shakespeare Society
October 26, 2019 ::: Video on YouTube
Friday, February 19, 2021, 3:00 pm EST
Friday, February 5, 2021, 12:00 pm EST
January 6, 2011
Ferrara, Italy, May 10-11, 2013 ::: Published as Onscreen Allusions to Shakespeare: International Films, Television, and Theatre
