By Bailey Ricciardi — March 30, 2026
Laura Turchi began her time at Arizona State University nearly twenty years ago in 2008, when she taught about digital resources and curriculum design in the English education program. She returned to ASU and the Department of English more recently in 2022, with an appointment in the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies as a clinical professor. In that capacity, Turchi is the curriculum director of Throughlines.org, a multimedia resource for college instructors about premodern critical race scholarship. Her own work explores Shakespeare and pedagogy, using the Bard’s work as an avenue to explore social justice, identity, community, and the power of social media. Turchi is an accomplished writer, educator, and musician.
Turchi began her career teaching high school English, which provided a solid foundation for her eventual move to Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina as the department chair of a teacher licensure program. At ASU twelve years later, she became a co-PI on a Federal Teacher Quality Initiative Grant which totaled $33.4 million. Five years after that, she moved to the University of Houston where she joined the College of Education.
Turchi’s passion for English literature and working with students who aspire to work in English education was actualized through her return to ASU. In her own words, “Most of my research work and publications are about teacher pedagogical practices with Shakespeare. Until September 30, 2025, I was curriculum consultant to the Shakespeare and Social Justice project with the Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles. We had our final year of U.S. Department of Education funding (we completed four years) canceled because our focus was not aligned with administrative priorities.” While the project cancelation was heartbreaking, Turchi finds her continuing work with teachers and teaching artists very fulfilling.
Turchi says that her greatest accomplishments in the classroom manifest in engaging readers to approach texts in new ways. She explains that the brilliance of Shakespeare is that his work demonstrates what mastery of the English language can achieve. It’s popular for a reason: it resonates with its audience. Turchi’s pedagogy is one that not only invites but urges her students to ask questions and inquire deeper—whether it’s about Shakespeare or otherwise.
Turchi’s classroom is often full of students who are asked to use Shakespeare’s work in a more modern context, such as creating social media content or public service announcements. Bringing Shakespeare to a modern context helps support her students’ understanding of how language is a material that can be crafted and molded into any number of tools for many ends.
Last fall, Turchi taught ENG 110: Language, the Self, and Society with Sally Ball and Ayanna Thompson. They explored Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew” and its varieties of views about love. Despite requiring the midterm exam to be written by hand with pen and paper, the students, according to Turchi, “only suffered the minor wounds of cramped hands,” and they went on to present wonderful, creative final projects.
Outside the classroom, Turchi is an active community member of “Moms Demand Action” (for Gun Sense in America) and is also a talented musician. When not connecting with her students or developing new material for Throughlines.org, she can be found playing a 1781 viola from Vienna that was given to ASU by Louise F. Kerr. She performs with the Women’s Orchestra of Arizona and the Scottsdale Philharmonic.