Areas of Specialization
English Renaissance Literature
Renaissance Faculty
The English department at Penn State has six Shakespeare and Renaissance specialists and the department is committed to keeping Renaissance studies an area of strength. Renaissance faculty have published a number of books with major university presses such as Cambridge University Press, University of Toronto Press, Oxford University Press, the University of Chicago Press, the University of Illinois Press, and the University of Georgia Press. They regularly publish articles in academic journals such as Shakespeare Quarterly, English Literary Renaissance , ELH , Renaissance Quarterly, English Literary Drama, Milton Studies, the Huntington Literary Quarterly, Spenser Studies, Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, and Renaissance and Reformation. Faculty include: Linda Woodbridge, Garrett Sullivan, Patrick Cheney, Laura Knoppers, Michael Kiernan, Marcy North.
Course Offerings in English Renaissance Literature
Seminars are offered on major authors (Shakespeare, Spenser, Marlowe, Milton) and genres (Elizabethan and Jacobean poetry and prose; Renaissance drama). Recent specialized courses have included:
- Writing Women in Seventeenth-Century England
- Race and Travel in Sixteenth-Century Poetry and Prose
- Shakespeare and Twentieth Century Cultural Politics
- Spenser and Marlowe: Theories of Imitation, Intertextuality, and Poetic Rivalry
- Historicizing Milton
- Inscribing the Court: Donne, Jonson, Bacon and King James
- Shakespeare and the Limits of Comedy
- Shakespeare in World Cultures, 1800-2000
- Women Writers, Julian of Norwich to Mary Wollstonecraft
- Shakespeare, Marlowe and the Anglo-Mediterranean World
- Milton and Popular Culture
- The Culture of Manuscripts in Early Modern England
Renaissance Reading Group
Renaissance professors and graduate students gather regularly to read and discuss texts suggested by the group members, read plays aloud, and attend and discuss theatrical productions. The reading group offers a pleasant, intellectually stimulating atmosphere for discussion. People argue vigorously but constructively and mingle amicably, whatever their critical or theoretical differences.
Renaissance Lectures
The English Department Renaissance group sponsors two lectures per year by prominent scholars, and the interdisciplinary Committee for Early Modern Studies sponsors several more speakers each year. Renaissance speakers from other universities during the past few years have included Margo Hendricks, Arthur Kinney, Bruce Smith, Michael Schoenfeldt, Emily Bartels, Jonathan Goldberg, Coppélia Kahn, Gail Paster, Jeffrey Masten, Peter Stallybrass, Andrew Hadfield, Wendy Wall, Jonathan Sawday, Frances Dolan, David Cressy, Peter Burke, Mary Floyd-Wilson, Nigel Smith, Dympna Callaghan, Mary Thomas Crane, and Katherine Rowe.
Research Resources in the Penn State Library System
Penn State's University Libraries have holdings of five million volumes and more than 58,000 periodicals. The university's on-line access is first-rate, featuring the MLA Bibliography, Early English Books Online, Literature Online, the Chadwyck-Healey English Drama and Poetry databases, the Bible in English, the World Shakespeare Bibliography, the Women Writers Project (which includes Renaissance Women Online), and many more. Of these, Early English Books Online is particularly important, making accessible via one's computer virtually all the books listed in the Pollard and Redgrave and Wing short-title catalogs (that is, all books printed up to 1700), and the Thomason Tract Collection which comprises more than 20,000 books, pamphlets, newspapers, and manuscripts from the Civil War and Interregnum (1641-1660). The University library also owns a complete run of early English books on microfilm, the series Early English Newspapers, an extensive collection from 1582 to 1860, and the Harvester microfilms: British Literary Manuscripts from the British Library, Bodleian Library, and Cambridge University Library. Other materials may be obtained through interlibrary Loan or ordered by the humanities librarian.
Folger Shakespeare Library
Less than a four-hour drive away, the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. offers a premier research environment for students in Renaissance literature. The Folger contains about 275,000 volumes encompassing British and European literary, cultural, political, religious, and social history, fifteenth to eighteenth centuries. The Shakespeare Collection boasts 79 first folios, over 200 quartos, thousands of later editions including hundreds of translations, and a wide range of secondary sources. The Folger offers courses throughout the academic year of interest to Renaissance students. Penn State is a member of the Folger Institute consortium, which gives students and faculty access to the Institute's resources and seminars. Generous grants are available to reimburse travel and lodging expenses for graduate students who participate in seminars and workshops. Each year, several of our graduate students travel weekly to the Folger for seminars.
Renaissance Studies in Other Departments
The English department maintains close connections with Renaissance specialists in other departments, such as History; Comparative literature; French; Spanish; Italian, and Portuguese; German; Religious Studies; and Theatre Arts. These faculty regularly serve on our graduate supervisory committees and offer seminars of interest to our students (e.g., a Dante seminar offered by a professor of Italian; medieval/Renaissance proseminars and a seminar in European tragedy offered by the Department of Comparative literature).
CURRENT RENAISSANCE GRADUATE STUDENTS (PhD LEVEL)
Hiewon Shin, dissertation on the non-traditional family in Renaissance literature
Jennifer Coats, dissertation on widows
Elizabeth (Beth) Gross, dissertation on women and warfare
Brian (Doc) Rissel, dissertation on monsters and the theory of monstrosity
Heather Murray, dissertation on revenge and narrative
Dustin Stegner, dissertation on confession
Nicole Jacobs, to take comprehensive examinations in 2006
Niamh O'Leary, admitted to PhD program for Fall, 2005
RECENT RENAISSANCE PhDs
Catherine (Cassie) Thomas, tenure-track position at the College of Charleston
Ryan Netzley, tenure-track position at Southern Illinois University
Greg Colón Semenza, tenure-track position at the University of Connecticut
Richard Cunningham, tenure-track position at Acadia University (Canada)
Anne Fisher, tenure-track position at the University of Eastern Kentucky
