In addition to this site, posts on Medium.com and countless articles for iMedia Connection, I’ve been a professional writer and editor for years. Here is a good sample of my writing:
Popular Press
“In Practice There Is: Three stories about progressive fatherhood.” In Bad Subjects: Political Education for Everyday Life (Spring 2004).
“The unwatchable dead-babyness of E.R .” In Bad Subjects: Political Education for Everyday Life (Fall 2001).
“Your Resume Is Like a Screenplay: What is it saying about you?” ICplanet.com (2000).
“On Beyond Shylock,” in Tikkun: A Bimonthly Jewish Critique of Politics, Culture & Society (January/February issue, 1997).
The Script Doctor Columns
While I was working in Hollywood (after Berkeley and before the Internet), I wrote a semi-regular column about screenwriting and how development executives read screenplays for ScriptShark.com. You can find archived versions of the columns here.
Sample articles from eLink: EarthLink’s email newsletter
- Online News and the Iraq War
- Can You Believe a Website?
- Digital Photography and the Internet
- Interview with Snopes.com
- 9/11 Remembered
- Food and the Net
- I Found it Online
For a complete list, search “Berens” at the eLink home page.
Shakespearean Stage History: A Beginner’s Guide
In 1997, shortly after I hand-built my first website for my students at Berkeley, I created an introduction to Shakespearean stage history for high school and college students as well as for my academic colleagues who were interested in learning more about how Shakespeare had been performed and how that might impact their more literary research. Scholars and students from as near as Los Angeles and as faraway as South Africa have used the guide and even included it in their course syllabi. I’ve updated the guide in little ways from time to time, but for the most part it is what I launched back in the day. You can check it out here.
Academic Publications
Doctoral Dissertation (U.C. Berkeley, 1998): “Shakespearean Contingencies: Repertory Allusion and the Birth of Mass Culture.”
Theatrical History Consultant: The Norton Shakespeare Workbook (edited by Mark Rose), researched and wrote extensive stage histories for six plays. (The Workbook is a CD-ROM, part of the Norton Shakespeare.) Click for sample.
“Spoken Daggers, Deaf Ears, and Silent Mouths: Fantasies of Deafness in Early Modern England.” In The Disability Studies Reader, edited by Lennard Davis (New York: Routledge, 1997). Written with Professor Jennifer Nelson (Gallaudet University, Washington D. C.).
Review of John Gillies’ Shakespeare and the Geography of Difference , in Renaissance Quarterly (50.3, Fall 1997).
Review of Robert E. Wood’s Some Necessary Questions of the Play: A Stage- Centered Analysis of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, in Shakespeare Bulletin: A Journal of Performance Criticism and Scholarship (14.3, Summer 1996).
Review of Shakespeare’s The Tempest , as performed by American Conservatory Theater (Geary Theater, San Francisco, CA), in Shakespeare Bulletin: A Journal of Performance Criticism and Scholarship (14.2, Spring 1996).
Web Only
Batman Watches Porn: Caped Crusader Caught in the Act! (October, 2004).