The entanglements of theology and sexuality will be the subject of the 2016 Paul Gottschalk Memorial Lecture, delivered by Jeffrey Masten of Northwestern University.

Masten’s lecture, “Christopher Marlowe’s Queer Reformations: Heresy, Theory, Book History,” is Thursday, Oct. 27, at 4:30 p.m. in Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall. Presented by the Department of English, the event is free and open to the public.

In Marlowe’s historical tragedy “Edward II,” King Edward asks, “Why should a king be subject to a priest?” – thus wading into the most intense political and theological controversies of its time. Marlowe’s play, first acted and published in the early 1590s, heavily influenced William Shakespeare’s “Richard II” and is arguably the most-cited text in pre-modern histories of English sexuality.

Reading through the twin lenses of queer theory and Reformation theology, Masten’s lecture will examine the relation of religion and the play’s projection, however fleeting, of a queer future of pleasure. The lecture will also unfold new evidence of the play’s earliest known readers, at least one of whom read it in relation to sodomy and heresy.

Masten is professor of English and gender and sexuality studies at Northwestern. His recent book, “Queer Philologies: Sex, Language, and Affect in Shakespeare’s Time,” focuses on the importance of the history of language to the history of sexuality in Renaissance Europe.

“We’re thrilled to bring Professor Masten to Cornell to deliver work related to his groundbreaking new book, which promises to reshape methodologies in the history of sexuality and the history of the book,” said Jenny Mann, associate professor of English in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Masten is the author of “Textual Intercourse: Collaboration, Authorship, and Sexualities in Renaissance Drama” (1997) and editor of “The Old Law” in the award-winning Oxford edition of the collected works of Thomas Middleton (2007). He earned his bachelor's at Denison University and doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania. At Northwestern, Masten was named a Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence, the university's highest teaching award.

While on campus, Masten will offer a seminar to faculty and graduate students, focusing on the relation between queer philology and the works of Shakespeare and Marlowe. Advance readings include chapters from “Queer Philologies” and an essay on Marlowe. The seminar meets Oct. 28 at 10 a.m. in the English Lounge, 258 Goldwin Smith Hall. Materials will be emailed to those who RSVP to lbl3@cornell.edu.

The Gottschalk Memorial Lecture was established in memory of Paul Gottschalk, professor of English at Cornell, scholar of British Renaissance literature and author of “The Meanings of Hamlet,” who died in 1977 at the age of 38.