Faculty Expertise in Renaissance Literature
There’s a reason that English Renaissance literature is identified as a “Golden Age.” In this period — covering roughly 1500 to 1660 — literary genres and modes flourished, new forms of poetry were invented or revived from classical exemplars, and the theater came to life as an important form of literary expression and popular entertainment. Emergent religious, social, political, scientific and economic relations, along with a reexamination of ancient and medieval literary forms, helped produce a large and eclectic body of literature.
Ohio State’s faculty in Renaissance literature offers a wide range of expertise — from Spenser and Shakespeare to Donne and Jonson to Marvell and Milton. Specialties also include law and legal culture, Early Modern medicine and science, Caroline drama, the Bible and religion, the literature of London, book history, performance practice and sexuality/gender studies.
Faculty and graduate students studying Renaissance English literature at Ohio State benefit from a variety of resources including membership in the Folger Shakespeare Library Consortium, the vibrant interdisciplinary culture of Ohio State's Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, an active early English theatre group and the extensive holdings of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Collection in Ohio State's Thompson Library.
ACTIVE FACULTY
- Alan Farmer: Renaissance drama, book history, Shakespeare and film, Early Modern news and popular culture, digital humanities
- Hannibal Hamlin: Shakespeare, Milton, religion and literature, English Bible and its influence, allusion, lyric poetry
- Jennifer Higginbotham: Women writers, early modern literature and culture, Shakespeare, gender and sexuality studies, poetics, critical theory
- Christopher Highley: Shakespeare and his contemporaries, Early Modern theater, literature and the culture of early modern London
- Elizabeth Zeman Kolkovich (Mansfield campus): Theater history, book history, gender and sexuality, women writers, Shakespeare and popular culture
- Sarah Neville: Scholarly textual editing, Shakespeare and performance, book history, Early Modern science and medicine
- Luke Wilson: Shakespeare, Milton, Early Modern law and legal culture, genre
EMERITUS FACULTY
COURSE OFFERINGS
- English 2220: Introduction to Shakespeare (for non-majors)
- English 2220H: Honors Introduction to Shakespeare (for non-majors)
- English 2221: Shakespeare, Race and Gender
- English 3378: Shakespeare and Film
- English 4520.01: Shakespeare
- English 4520.02: Studies in Shakespeare (topics vary each term)
Recent topics have included: Shakespeare's Influences, Shakespeare the Influencer [Wilson]; Q1 Hamlet in Criticism and Performance [Neville]; Shakespeare's Sense of Humor [Neville]; Shakespeare and Others (Kyd, Marlowe, Jonson) (Wilson); Hamlet: History, Texts, and Afterlives [Highley]; The Tempest and its Afterlives [Hamlin]; Shakespeare’s Henriad: History, Performance, Print [Farmer]; The Merry Wives of Windsor in Criticism and Performance [Neville]; Richard II in Criticism and Performance [Neville] - English 4521: Renaissance Drama
Recent topics have included: Ben Jonson [Highley]; The Infamous Christopher Marlowe [Farmer] - English 4522: Renaissance Poetry
Recent topics have included: Nature Writing [Wilson]; The Poetry of Excess [Wilson]; The Faerie Queene [Neville]; Milton’s Paradise Lost and the Fall in Renaissance Literature [Farmer] - English 4523: Special Topics in Renaissance Literature and Culture
Recent topics have included: Court and Society in Stuart England [Highley]; John Donne and Ben Jonson [Wilson]; Literature of the English Civil War [Highley]; The Intersectional Renaissance [Higginbotham]; Literature, Politics, and Religion in the Reign of Henry VIII [Highley]; Popularity and Popular Culture in Renaissance England [Farmer]; The Importance of Dinner in Ancient and Early Modern Literature [Hamlin] - English 4564.01: Studies in a Major Medieval or Renaissance Author
- English 4590.02H: Honors Seminar in Renaissance Literature
- English 5720: Topics in Shakespeare
Recent topics have included: Shakespeare's Dramaturgy [Neville]; Shakespeare in History: Theater, Print and Criticism [Farmer] - English 5721: Topics in Renaissance Drama
Recent topics have included: Current Critical Approaches [Highley]; The Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher: Genre, Kingship, Sexuality and Colonialism [Farmer]; The Intersectional Renaissance [Higginbotham] - English 5722: Topics in Renaissance Poetry
Recent topics have included: John Milton's Paradise Lost [Hamlin]; Poetry and Prayer: The Religious Lyrics [Hamlin] - English 5723: Topics in Renaissance Literature
Recent topics have included: Religion, Revolution and Retreat in Seventeenth-Century English Literature [Hamlin]
- English 7820: Topics in Shakespeare
Recent topics have included: The Bible in Shakespeare [Hamlin]; English Multiple-Text Shakespeare Plays [Farmer]; Feminist Approaches to Shakespeare [Higginbotham] - English 7827: Topics in Renaissance Literature
Recent topics have included: Milton [Wilson]; Theater and Neighborhood in Early Modern England [Highley]; Renaissance Pastoral: Literary Form and the Politics of Agrarian Labor [Wilson]; Genre and Mode in Renaissance Literature [Wilson]; Caroline Drama [Farmer]; The Medical Marketplace of Renaissance London [Neville]
Recent workshops for Ohio State graduate students on Renaissance-related topics have been led by Roland Greene, Randall McLeod, Stephen Orgel, Dympna Callaghan and Heather Dubrow.
- English 4592: Special Topics in Women in Literature and Culture—The Renaissance of Renaissance Women Writers [Higginbotham]
- English 5194: Group Studies—Death [Hamlin]; Group Studies—Job and the Problem of Innocent Suffering [Hamlin]
- English 7891.01/.02: Seminar in Disability Theory [Dhar]
- English 8982: Textual Criticism and Editing [Neville]
- Medren 2610: Science and Technology in Medieval and Renaissance Culture [Neville]
- Medren 4217: Early Modern London-Urban Spaces and Popular Culture [Highley]
- Medren 5611: History of the Book [Farmer]
- Medren 5695: Seminar—The European Renaissance [Hamlin]
SCHOLARLY RESOURCES
The Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies is an interdisciplinary center in the College of Arts and Sciences dedicated to the study of history, culture, society, technology and the arts from late antiquity to the early modern era. Each year, the CMRS recognizes outstanding papers written by Ohio State students in medieval or Renaissance courses with the Stanley J. Kahrl and Barbara A. Hanawalt Awards for best undergraduate and graduate student essays.
English Department Liaison: Hannibal Hamlin
Director for the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies: Christopher Highley
The Ohio State University is dues-paying consortium member of the Folger Shakespeare Library. Through our consortium membership, graduate students regularly receive funding support to participate in Folger Institute seminars, paleography courses and the dissertation seminar “Researching the Archive.”
Folger Shakespeare Library Liaison: Alan Farmer
The Ohio State University Libraries rank among the most highly rated of the public research university libraries in the United States. The main campus library for the study of British and American literature is Thompson Library. Of particular interest to Renaissance students and faculty are the holdings of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, which includes the Stevens-Cox Sigla collection of STC books, the Harold Grimm History of Reformation collection and the Stanley J. Kahrl collection.
Rare Books and Libraries Curator: Eric Johnson
AFFILIATED GROUPS
The Renaissance Reading Group meets once or twice per term to read and discuss critical essays/books or unfamiliar primary works, particularly plays.
Coordinator: Sarah Neville
The Renaissance Diessertation Seminar is a regular forum for the presentation and discussion of graduate student work in progress.
Coordinator: Alan Farmer
The Medieval and Renaissance Graduate Student Association is an interdisciplinary association of graduate students in medieval and renaissance fields, designed to serve academic, professional, and social needs of these students.
President: Shaun Russell
Lord Denney's Players is an academic theatrical group housed in the Ohio State Department of English. Founded in 2014, the group provides an opportunity for undergraduates, graduate students and faculty to engage in intensive experiential learning and research around the annual production of a play or series of plays. For editors and scholars of textual transmission, performance work is particularly valuable, as it allows literary claims about the playability of moments of textual disturbance to be tested and evaluated. In 2018, LDP was honored by the Columbus City Council for the first modern performance of the first quarto text of Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor. Other productions have included Shakespeare’s Richard II (spring 2015, in two different texts), The Annunciation/The Second Shepherds’ Play (autumn 2015), Shakespeare’s The Tempest (spring 2017) and the first quarto text of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (spring 2019).
Lord Denney's Players Creative Director: Sarah Neville