BA (Hons) MA Cape Town  DPhil KCL

Hassana Moosa is a Lecturer in English Literary Studies at the University of Cape Town. Her research focuses on the intersections of race and class, race and religion, and slavery in early modern English literature. She is working on her first book project, which is tentatively entitled Branding Bondage: Racial Slavery on the Early Modern English Stage (1560-1660). Her research on this project is supported by a National Research Foundation (NRF) Thuthuka Research Grant (2025-2027).

Before joining UCT as a lecturer, she worked across a range of teaching and administrative roles, including as Research Administrator for the Shakespeare Centre London (King’s College London, and Shakespeare’s Globe) and Project Administrator for the KCL/Globe Shakespeare and Race Festival 2022.

She is currently a Short-Term Fellow in the 2025-6 Folger Shakespeare Library’s Fellowship Programme. She is a board member of RaceB4Race (ACMRS, Arizona State University) as well as the Shakespeare Society of Southern Africa, and is a Research Editor on the project Medieval and Early Modern Orients. She is also a founding member of the Early Modern Scholars of Colour Network.

Research Interests

Premodern Critical Race Studies

Early Modern Literature and Theatre (including Shakespeare)

Histories and Literatures of Slavery

Premodern Literatures of Euro-Islamic Encounter

Islamophobia Studies

Theatre and Performance

Orientalism and Colonialism

Intersections of race with class, animality/non-humanity, and religion

Selected Publications

Academic:

‘Baseless Fabric: Prospero’s Other Spirits’, Shakespeare Survey 79 (forthcoming, 2026) - This work is based on the research supported in part by the National Research Foundation of South Africa through a Thuthuka Research Grant (NRF TTK240425216020).

‘Belief & Religion’ in A Cultural History of Gender in The Early Modern World, ed. by Kit Heyam (London: Bloomsbury, 2026)

‘White Skin, White Mask: Constructing Whiteness in Thomas Kyd’s The Tragedy of Soliman and Perseda’, Renaissance Studies 37.5 (2023): 665-684.

‘Marking Muslims: The Prince of Morocco and the Racialisation of Islam in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice’ in Global Shakespeare and Social Injustice ed. by Chris Thurman and Sandra Young, (London: Arden Bloomsbury, 2023)

‘Review of Shakespeare’s Hamlet (Directed by Neil Coppen, Presented by The Centre for Creative Arts, University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, and Daniel Galloway Consulting, in partnership with VR Theatrical, the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees (KKNK), and the Tsikinya-Chaka Center)’, Shakespeare Bulletin 40.1 (2022), 139-143. DOI: 10.1353/shb.2022.0006

Public-Facing:

‘Review of Isabella Hammad’s Enter Ghost’, The Johannesburg Review of Books, 25 March 2025, available at:

<https://johannesburgreviewofbooks.com/2025/03/25/storytelling-as-a-point-of-departure-for-resistance-hassana-moosa-reviews-isabella-hammads-new-novel-enter-ghost/>

‘British Empire in The Tempest’, Programme Notes for The Tempest, staged as part of Playing Shakespeare with Deutsche Bank at Shakespeare’s Globe, April 2023, available at:

<https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/learn/secondary-schools/playing-shakespeare-with-deutsche-bank/the-tempest-playing-shakespeare/language-and-analysis/the-tempest-british-empire/>

‘Picturing Muslims: Gentile Bellini’s “The Sultan Mehmet II”’. Medieval and Early Modern Orients, 18 April 2022, available at: <https://memorients.com/articles/picturing-muslims-gentile-bellinis-the-sultan-mehmet-ii>

Race and Religion in Robert Daborne's A Christian Turn'd Turk’, Medieval and Early Modern Orients, 20 October 2020, available at: <https://memorients.com/articles/race-and-religion-in-robert-dabornes-a-christian-turnd-turk>