Shaun Russell is a Senior Lecturer working in the fields of early modern literature, book history, and composition. Though he has a keen interest in early modern drama, his current research delves into questions of intention (authorial and otherwise) as it pertains to mid-seventeenth-century 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. Representative publications include “Shakespeare’s Sonnet 145 and the Challenges of Legacy Criticism,” forthcoming in Critical Survey 36.3, and “Superliminare and the Textual Authority of the Williams Manuscript of George Herbert’s Poems” in George Herbert Journal 43, published in 2022.

Beyond the above, Shaun’s current focus is a book project centered on seventeenth-century women's poetry, particularly the varying reasons why women poets decided (or did not decide) to have their works published in print.

To date, Shaun has taught twenty-eight 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 2367 (Second-year Writing)
• English 3395 (Literature and Leadership)
• ARTSSCI 1137 (Music and Social Justice)