St. Olaf alum Karen Marsalek did her graduate work at Oxford and the University of Toronto. Within her field of early English literature, her passion is the study and performance of medieval and Renaissance drama; she’s directed and performed in medieval plays at the University of Toronto and has studied Shakespeare’s stagecraft at the Globe Theater in London.  She teaches classes in drama and in early English literature, children's and young adult literature, and periodically leads the Interim Theater in London course.  She has also had the great pleasure of teaching in three cohorts of the Enduring Questions (formerly Great Conversation) program, and is the on-campus advisor for two study away opportunties at Oxford: the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and Harris Manchester College.

Professor Marsalek's current scholarly project is a book on bodily remains and revenants in plays performed by the King’s Men, Shakespeare's theater company.  She has co-edited a book of essays on early English drama, and has published articles on stagings of resurrections, Antichrist, and the divorce trial of Henry VIII.  At home, she loves to cook, garden, and haunt thrift shops, and tries hard to keep up with her two sons.