Education
I earned a Ph.D. in English from the University of Southern California. My dissertation was called “Stage, Cathedral, Wagon, Street: Theatricality and Religion in Renaissance England.” It was awarded the J. Leeds Barroll Prize from the Shakespeare Association of America for the best Shakespeare-related dissertation filed in 2012. While at USC, I spent many wonderful days studying at the Huntington Library in San Marino—more often walking their gardens than calling their 400-year-old books.
My M.A. in English is from the University of Connecticut and my B.A. in the same subject is from Biola University in California.
Books and Edited Volumes
Shakespearean Recognitions: Philosophies of the Post-Tragic, in review
Literature and Religious Experience: Beyond Belief and Unbelief, co-edited with Caleb Spencer (Bloomsbury, forthcoming February 2022)
The Future of Christianity and Literary Studies, special issue of Christianity & Literature, forthcoming December 2021 (Johns Hopkins University Press)
Performance and Religion in Early Modern England: Stage, Cathedral, Wagon, Street (Notre Dame Press, 2018).
The Face-to-Face in Shakespearean Drama: Ethics, Philosophy, Performance, co-edited with Julia Reinhard Lupton (Edinburgh University Press, 2019)
Sincerity, guest co-editor, with Caleb D. Spencer, special issue of Christianity & Literature, 67, no. 1 (2017), (SAGE, December 2017)
The Sacramental Text Reconsidered, guest editor, special issue of Christianity & Literature66, no. 3 (2017), (SAGE, June 2017)
Refereed Articles and Contributions to Peer-Reviewed Edited Collections
“Early English Recognitions,” in Transforming Traditions in Early English Drama, ed. Katharine Goodland and Daisy Black (forthcoming, Cambridge University Press), pp. TBD.
“The Course of Recognition in Cymbeline,” in Matthew J. Smith and Julia Reinhard Lupton, editors, The Face-to-Face in Shakespearean Drama(Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2019), pp. 77-108.
“‘At war twixt will and will not’: Shakespeare’s Idea of Religion in Measure for Measure,” in a special issue of Religions, ed. David Urban, 9, no. 7 (2018), online <https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/9/12/419/htm>
“Ballads+: The Tragedy of Romeo and Julietand its After-Piece Jig,” co-authored with Julia Lupton, in Patricia Fumerton, ed., Ballads and Performance: The Multi-Modal Stage in Early Modern England(U of California Press; imprint of Early Modern Center, UC Santa Barbara, 2018), online <http://scalar.usc.edu/works/ballads-and-performance-the-multi-modal-stage-in-early-modern-england/ballads-staging-the-jig-inromeo-and-juliet—-julia-reinhardt-lupton-and-matthew-smith>
“Tragedy beforeFear and Pity,” in Donald R. Wehrs and Thomas Blake, eds., Handbook to Affect Studies(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), pp. 391-412.
“w/Sincerity, Part 1: The Drama of the Will from Augustine to Milton,” in The Return to Sincerity, a special issue of Christianity & Literature67, no. 1 (2017): 8-33.
“’la manière de Milton’: Baudelaire Reads Milton’s Satan,” in The Hermeneutics of Hell: Devilish Visions and Visions of the Devil in World Literature, ed. Gregor Thuswaldner and Dan Russ (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2017), pp. 211-38.
“The Disincarnate Text: Ritual Poetics in Herbert, Paul, Williams, and Levinas,” Introduction to “The Sacramental Text Reconsidered,” a special issue of Christianity & Literature66, no. 3 (June 2017): 363-84.
“Teaching Religion and Character in Richard III and Henry V,” in Approaches to Teaching Shakespeare’s History Plays, ed. Laurie Ellinghausen (New York: Modern Language Association, 2017), pp. 67-74.
“God’s Idioms: Sermon Belief in Donne’s London,” ELR: English Literary Renaissance44, no. 3 (2016): 93-128.
“The Experience of Ceremony in Henry V,” SEL: Studies in English Literature52, no. 2 (2014): 401-21. Republished in Shakespeare Criticism, vol. 173, ed. Lawrence Trudeau (Gale/Cengage, 2017).
“Describing the Sense of Confession in Hamlet,” in The Return of Theory in Early Modern English Studies, Volume 2, eds. Paul Cefalu, Gary Kuchar, and Bryan Reynolds (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 165-84.
“‘the salarie of your lust’: Rethinking the Economics of Virtue in Massinger’s Plays,” Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England26 (2103): 75-96.
Encyclopedia Entries
(2012) “Phineas Fletcher,” The Encyclopedia of English Renaissance Literature, eds., A. Stewart, G. Sullivan, R. Lemon, J. Summit, N. McDowell. Oxford: Blackwell.
(2012) “Richard Corbett,” The Encyclopedia of English Renaissance Literature, eds., A. Stewart, G. Sullivan, R. Lemon, J. Summit, N. McDowell. Oxford: Blackwell, 2012.
Book Reviews
Daniel Cadman, Andrew Duxfield, and Lisa Hopkins, eds., The Genres of Renaissance Tragedy (Manchester University Press, 2019), forthcoming in Renaissance Quarterly, 2020.
Jan Frans Dijkhuizen, A Literary History of Reconciliation: Power, Remorse, and the Limits of Forgiveness(Bloomsbury, 2018), forthcoming in Christianity & Literature, 2020.
Vinita Neelakanta, Retelling the Siege of Jerusalem in Early Modern England(Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2019), forthcoming in Renaissance Quarterly.
Paul Cefalu, The Johannine Renaissance in Early Modern English Literature and Theology(Oxford: Oxford UP, 2018), forthcoming with Religion & Literature.
Moshe Gold, Sandor Goodhart, with Kent Lehnhof, eds., Of Levinas and Shakespeare: “To See Another Thus,” (West Lafayette: Purdue UP, 2017), forthcoming in Shakespeare (2018).
Paul Kottman, Love as Human Freedom (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2017), forthcoming inModern Language Quarterly (2018).
Constance Furey, Poetic Relations: Intimacy and Faith in the English Reformation(Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2017), in Modern Philology (2017). Print pp. TBD. Online https://doi.org/10.1086/695969
Blair Hoxby, What was Tragedy? Theory and the Early Modern Canon(Oxford: Oxford UP, 2016) and Peter Holbrook, English Renaissance Tragedy: Ideas of Freedom (London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2015), in Shakespeare Quarterly 68, no. 2 (2017): 209-211.
Kimberly Johnson, Made Flesh: Sacrament and Poetics in Post-Reformation England (Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2014), in Religion & Literature47, no. 2 (2016).
Kurt A. Schreyer, Shakespeare’s Medieval Craft: Remnants of the Mysteries on the London Stage (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2014), in Speculum90, no. 3 (2015): 851-52.
Virtual Paul’s Cross Project: A Digital Re-creation of John Donne’s Gunpowder Day Sermon. Website. John N. Wall, principle investigator. http:// http://vpcp.chass.ncsu.edu, in The Spenser Review44.2.33 (2014).
Sarah Beckwith, Shakespeare and the Grammar of Forgiveness (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2011), Shakespeare Studiesno. 42 (2014): 301-09.
Julia Reinhard Lupton, Thinking with Shakespeare: Essays on Politics and Life (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2011), in English Studies94, no. 4 (2013): 502-03.
Joel B. Altman, The Improbability of Othello: Rhetorical Anthropology and Shakespearean Selfhood (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2010), in Comparative Drama45, no. 4 (2013): 442-45.
Regina Schwartz, Sacramental Poetics at the Dawn of Secularism: When God Left the World (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2008), in Literature and Theology23, no. 4 (2009): 459-461.
Editorial Experience
Associate Editor. Christianity & Literature, 2015-present
Assistant Editor. Precedence, Practice, and Appropriation: The Old English Homily. Ed. Aaron Kleist. Turnhout: Brepols, 2007.
Awards and Honors
2020 Pedagogy Fellow, Yale Divinity School
2019 University Faculty Scholarship Award, Honoree, APU
2019 Beverly Hardcastle Stanford Research Fellowship, 6 months, APU
2018 Anticipatory Thinking Award, Provost Office, APU
2018 Research Fellowship, 6 months, Center for Christian Thought, “The End of Time and
the Idea of Tragedy,” Biola University
2017 Center for Research in Ethics, Research Grant, “Face to Face in Shakespearean Drama” APU
2015 Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, Planning Grant, Primary Author (team members: Brett Foster and Clare Costley King’oo), “Religion without Shakespeare”
2015 SURE Grant (Scholarly Undergraduate Research Experience), APU
2015 Francis Bacon Foundation Fellow in Renaissance England, “Stage, Cathedral, Wagon, Street,” Huntington Library
2014 Center for Research in Ethics, Research Grant, “Early Modern Theatricality Across the Reformation,” APU
2013 J. Leeds Barroll Dissertation Prize, Winner, Shakespeare Association of America
2013 Faculty Research Grant, Faculty Research Council, APU
2013 Emerging Scholar Award and Research Grant, APU
2013 Center for Research in Ethics and Values, Research Grant, “Stage, Cathedral, Wagon,Street,” APU
2012 Huntington Library, Early Modern Studies Institute, Research Grant
2012 Renaissance Society of America, Research Grant, “Stage, Cathedral, Wagon, Street”
2012 Russell Endowed Fellowship, U of Southern California
Invited Talks
“Literary Recognitions: For, With, Against,” Humanities Center, Brigham Young University, May 2019.
“King Lear’s Duets,” Barclay Theater, Irvine, University of California, November 2018.
“Heart’s Ease: Or, What Clowns, Romeo and Juliet, Aeschylus, and Ballet have to Teach Us about the Bawdy Postlude Jig,” Invited talk at Whitworth University, Spokane, WA, February 2018.
“Unnecessary Recognitions: The Festive Imagination in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline,” Plenary speaker, “Tragedy, Recognition, Conversion,” conference at Duke University, October 2017.
“Sincere Affects and the Affectation of Sincerity: The Example of Ford’s ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore,” Invited participant in: “Early Modern States of Mind II,” Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, March 2017.
“Acts of Recognition: Facing Shakespeare’s Genre,” Plenary Speaker, conference on the “Face to Face in Shakespearean Performance Studies.” University of California, Irvine, February 2017.
“Staging the Jig in Romeo and Juliet,” Keynote Speaker. Event: “Ending with Music,” Co-sponsored by UC Santa Barbara Early Modern Center and The Group for the Study of Early Cultures, UCI. U of California Irvine, January, 2016.
“Sounding Sermons: How Early Moderns Listened,” presentation at graduate school seminar: “Sound Studies,” led by Bruce R. Smith, University of Southern California, October, 2015.
“To the Tune of Tragedy: A Cautionary Tale of Shakespeare in Song and Dance,” plenary speaker: Shakespeare Reimagined: Interpretations Across the Arts, Chapman University, April 2015.
“Wiggling with Shakespeare: The Theatricality of Power in Henry V,” Reed College, February 2015.
“Love and Lovesickness in Twelfth Night: Poetry, Medicine, Society, Theatrics,” The New Swan Shakespeare Festival, U of California, Irvine. August, 2014.
“The Phenomenologies of Confession in Hamlet,” w/ Shakespeare: a Multi-Campus Research Group, School of the Humanities, U of California, Irvine. February 2014.
“The Devil’s in the Audience: Suggestions for Theatrical Belief in Marlowe’s Faustus,” Renaissance Literature Seminar, Early Modern Studies Institute, Huntington Library, May 4, 2013.
“Using Early Modern Broadside Ballads to Theorize Audience Reception of Drama,” invited by Patricia Fumerton for lecture series on Ballads in Research. English Department, U of California, Santa Barbara, November 2013.
“Making the Transition to Assistant Professor,” USC Center for Excellence in Teaching, delivered to graduate students and postdocs at USC. March 9, 2013.
“The Birth of English Materialism: Descartes and Locke,” Torrey Honors College, Biola University, April 2009.
“Creating Successful Cumulative Reading Assignments in the College Writing Classroom.” UConn Writing Department Training, University of Connecticut, August 2007.
“Some Advice from Paulo Freire and John Locke on Writing Assignment Design,” UConn Writing Department Training, August 2007.
“Revolutionaries and Roundheads: Poetic Mimesis from Sidney to Wordsworth.” Torrey Honors College, Biola University, March 2005.
“Paradise Lost and Cartesian Dualism.” English Department, Biola University, November 2005.
Conference Papers, Chairs, Moderations
“How Shakespeare’s Clowns can save Tragedy today,” Panel: “Public Shakespeare / Public Humanities,” Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association, November 2019.
“Poetics and the Religious Turn,” panelist at session recognizing “Poetics / Praxis,” a special issue of C&L, Humanities Center, Brigham Young University, May 2019.
“Sincerely Sinning: A Literary History of Sincerity,” Panel: “The Problem with the Self is the Problem with God,” Moderated by Caleb Spencer. “The Problem with God,” Harvard University, March 2019.
“The Poetic Justice of Complaint: Theodicy in Samson Agonistes,” Panel: Early Modern Complaint, Moderated by Emily Shortslef. Modern Language Association, January 2019.
“‘The sole drift of my purpose’: Fairy Pastoral and the Post-Tragic in The Tempest.”Seminar: “Revisiting Genre Theory.” Shakespeare Association of America Annual Meeting, Los Angeles, CA, March 2018.
“Disincarnating the Text: Un-Sacramental Reading in Levinas and Herbert,” Panel: “Sacramental Crossings in English and American Literatures,” Western Region Conference on Christianity and Literature. Point Loma University, San Diego, April 2017.
“Ending with a Jig,” Annual Meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America. Seminar Title: “Beyond Shakespeare’s Genres,” Atlanta, April 2017.
Moderator, “Key Words I: Entertainment, Acknowledgment, Acting,” conference session at “Entertaining the Idea: Shakespeare, Philosophy, Performance,” UCLA, October 2016.
Seminar Leader, “The Face-to-Face in Shakespearean Drama,” Shakespeare Association of America Annual Meeting, New Orleans, April 2016.
“Dancing Fear Away: The Post-Tragic Jig in Romeo and Juliet.” Seminar: “The Face-to-Face in Shakespearean Drama,” Shakespeare Association of American Annual Meeting, New Orleans, March 2016.
Panel Respondent, “Early Modern Performances,” The Pacific Coast Conference on British Studies, Las Vegas, March 7, 2015.
Talk Moderator, “‘Quod Omnes Tangit’: Taxes and the Sense of the Strange in Shakespeare’s King John,” by David Glimp, at Touching Shakespeare: Proximity, Precarity, and Resiliance in Renaissance Drama and Modern Life, UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, February 13, 2015.
“Race, Religion, and Biological Exceptionalism in Shakespeare’s Aaron.” Seminar: “Conversions / Conversations: The Language of Religious and Cultural Encounter.” Annual Meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America, April 2014.
Panel Chair, “Music and Performance.” Living English Broadside Ballads, 1550-1750: Song, Art, Dance, Culture. Huntington Library, April 4, 2014.
Panel Moderator and Chair, “The Post-Tragic in Contemporary Film and Fiction,” an undergraduate panel for the Common Day of Learning, APU, 2014.
“Performing a Black-faced Confession: Shakespeare’s Aaron.” Midwest Modern Language Association Annual Meeting, Milwaukee, WI, November 2013.
“Collaborating with the Devil on the Marlovian Stage,” Western Regional Conference for Christianity and Literature, Azusa Pacific University, May 2013.
“The Hospital Profane in Chester’s ‘The Last Supper,’” Sponsored Panel of the Center for Confraternity Studies, Renaissance Society of America, San Diego, March 2013.
Panel Organizer, “Collaborative Faith at the Dawn of Secularism,” Western Regional Conference for Christianity and Literature, Azusa Pacific University, May 2013.
Respondent. “The Way I See It,” Icarus: Thematic Option Research Conference, U of Southern California, April 10, 2012.
“The Identity of Religion in Sixteenth-Century English Ballads,” Pacific Coast Conference on British Studies, Huntington Library, March, 2012.
“De-Ciphering the Deep Things of Henry V,” British Shakespeare Association, Annual Meeting, Lancaster, England, February 2012.
“God’s ‘um’: Idiomatic Belief in Donne’s Sermons,” Renaissance Conference of Southern California, San Marino, CA. May 7, 2011.
“Figures of Conceit and the Conception of Belief in Hamlet,” Seminar: “Figures of Speech,” Annual Meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America, Seattle, WA. April 2011.
“Hamlet’s Interiority Reconsidered,” Institute for British and Irish Studies, University of Southern California. March, 31, 2011.
“Human Dissection and Animal Sin in Donne’s Sermons,” Pacific Coast Conference on British Studies, University of San Diego, March 2009.
“Coping with the Problems of Unitization in Composition Classes.” University of Connecticut Conference for the Teaching of Writing, March 2008.
“Reclaiming Reality: Mother Nature Cults, Mystery and Reconciliation in The Brothers Karamazov.” Graduate and Undergraduate Literature Conference, Biola University. May 2005. (Best Conference Paper Award).
“‘Which Kingston?’: Mixing Rhetorical Voices in The Woman Warrior.” Graduate and Undergraduate Literature Conference, Biola University. May 2005.