Shaun Russell is a Senior Lecturer working in the fields of early modern literature, book history, and editorial theory. Though he has a keen interest in early modern drama, his research frequently engages with questions of intention (authorial and otherwise) as it pertains to early modern editions of poetry. Why certain editions were published, and who made those decisions is key to understanding why poems look the way they do, and why we're even able to read them at all. His work also focuses on the nature of early modern criticism, and frequently revisits long-lingering critical assumptions made about works of the period. Recent conference presentations have engaged with Shakespeare, Herbert, Milton, and Katherine Philips, while representative publications include “Shakespeare’s Sonnet 145 and the Challenges of Legacy Criticism,” in Critical Survey 36.2, and “Superliminare and the Textual Authority of the Williams Manuscript of George Herbert’s Poems” in George Herbert Journal 43. Additionally, an article on the editorial tradition of Shakespeare's Sonnet 146 will appear in Studies in Philology in 2025.

Related to the above, Shaun’s current research focus is a book project tentatively titled Legacy Criticism and Shakespeare’s Sonnets. This in-progress monograph delves into the modern history of Shakespeare Sonnets criticism to explore how certain critical theories have become commonplaces that are accepted and amplified without due scrutiny. Revisiting some of these theories and weighing their lasting merits can often help us see the Sonnets in a new light.

To date, Shaun has taught forty courses at OSU, including some of the following:

• English 1110 (Writing and Information Literacy)
• English 2201 (British Literature to 1800)
• English 2220 (Introduction to Shakespeare)
• English 2260 (Introduction to Poetry)
• English 2261 (Introduction to Fiction)
• English 2262: (Introduction to Drama)
• English 2367.01 (Second-year Writing)
• English 2367.02 (Literature in the U.S Experience)
• English 3264 (Monsters Without and Within)
• English 3395 (Literature and Leadership)
• ARTSSCI 1137 (Music and Social Justice)