Medieval and Renaissance
The Medieval and Renaissance Literature Group in the Department of English offers outstanding educational and research opportunities, with distinguished faculty whose scholarship engages a range of fields and approaches. Located within easy reach of one of the world’s richest archival environments, our campus affords easy access to the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Library of Congress, Dumbarton Oaks, and the resources of the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian Institution. English Renaissance literature has long been recognized and supported as an established strength within the University of Maryland's large and dynamic English department. We offer small classes, fellowships and teaching assistantships for graduate student support, and an enviable record of academic job placements.
With an unusually large and distinguished contingent of sixteen core and affiliated faculty, the Medieval and Renaissance Studies group is committed to broad coverage of the period as well as training in cutting edge scholarly methods. Special strengths include historical approaches, textual studies, women's studies, and contemporary theory. In collaboration with the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) and the Folger Shakespeare Library, we are also in the forefront of bringing contemporary technology to bear on the study of early modern literature. As a recognized area of excellence within the University, we benefit from strong funding for recruitment and support of graduate students with special fellowship packages. In addition, Medieval and Renaissance studies at Maryland also benefits from its overlapping work with other prominent areas of interest in the English department, including: Comparative Literature; the long Eighteenth Century; transatlantic studies; rhetoric; literatures of the African Diaspora; feminist criticism and theory; and gender, gay, and lesbian studies. Our ties outside the department with the Center for Renaissance and Baroque Studies, the Committee on Africa and the Americas, Women's Studies, the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities, Performance Studies, History, and the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures provide our faculty and students with opportunities to enrich their intellectual communities and to expand and challenge their research interests.
The university library system has excellent holdings in secondary literature, an extensive selection of electronic databases and journals, and a valuable microfilm archive. Researchers of the Renaissance benefit especially from the university's active participation in the Folger Consortium. As well as reading in the library, Faculty and students can participate in the Folger Institute's academic programs, and graduate students are encouraged to enroll in Folger seminars for credit. Further opportunities are available through the Washington Area consortium that allows cross-registration with other area universities.
Our Faculty
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Ralph Bauer Associate Professor |
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Kent Cartwright Professor Chair |
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Kimberly Coles Associate Professor |
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Theresa Coletti Professor |
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Jane Donawerth Professor Distinguished Scholar-Teacher |
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Donna Hamilton Professor Associate Provost for Academic Affairs and Dean, UGST |
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Theodore Leinwand Professor |
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Maynard Mack Emeritus Professor |
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Thomas Moser Associate Professor Director, Undergraduate Studies |
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Michael Olmert Professor of the Practice |
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Gerard Passannante Assistant Professor |
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Charles Rutherford Assistant Professor Associate Dean, College of Arts and Humanities |
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Vessela Valiavitcharska Assistant Professor |
Faculty Bookshelf
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Professor Jane Donawerth Conversational Rhetoric: The Rise and Fall of a Women's Tradition, 1600-1900 Southern Illinois University Press, 2011 |
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Professor Kent Cartwright Editor, A Companion to Tudor Literature Wiley-Blackwell, 2010 |
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Associate Professor Ralph Bauer Editor, with Jose Antonio Mazzotti, Creole Subjects in the Colonial Americas: Empires, Texts, Identities University of North Carolina Press, 2009 |
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Professor of the Practice Michael Olmert Kitchens, Smokehouses, and Privies: Outbuildings and the Architecture of Daily Life in the Eighteenth-Century Mid-Atlantic Cornell University Press, 2009 |
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Associate Professor Kimberly Coles Religion, Reform, and Women's Writing in Early Modern England Cambridge University Press, 2008 |
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Professor Theodore Leinwand Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works Oxford University Press, 2008 |
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Professor Marshall Grossman Editor, Reading Renaissance Ethics Routledge, 2007 |
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Professor Donna Hamilton Anthony Munday and the Catholics, 1560-1633 Ashgate, 2005 |
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Associate Professor Ralph Bauer An Inca Account of the Conquest of Peru
By Titu Cusi Yupanqui University of Colorado Press, 2005 |
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Associate Professor Thomas Moser A Cosmos of Desire: The Medieval Latin Erotic Lyric in English Manuscripts University of Michigan Press, 2004 |
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Professor Theresa Coletti Mary Magdalene and the Drama of Saints: Theater, Gender, and Religion in Late Medieval England University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004 |
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Professor Jane Donawerth co-editor and co-translator, Selected Letters, Orations, and Rhetorical Dialogues of Madeleine de Scudery University of Chicago Press, 2004 |
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Associate Professor Ralph Bauer The Cultural Geography of Colonial American Literatures: Empire, Travel, Modernity Cambridge University Press, 2003 |
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Professor of the Practice Michael Olmert The Smithsonian Book of Books Smithsonian Books, 2003 |
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Professor Jane Donawerth editor, Rhetorical Theory by Women before 1900: An Anthology Rowman & Littlefield, 2002 |
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Professor Jane Donawerth Co-editor, Women, Writing, and the Reproduction of Culture in Tudor and Stuart Britain Syracuse University Press, 2000 |
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Professor Kent Cartwright Theatre and Humanism: English Drama in the Sixteenth Century Cambridge University Press, 1999 |
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Professor Theodore Leinwand Theatre, Finance and Society in Early Modern England Cambridge University Press, 1999 |
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Professor of the Practice Michael Olmert Official Guide to Colonial Williamsburg Colonial Williamsburg, 1998 |
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Professor Marshall Grossman The Story of All Things: Writing the Self in English Renaissance Narrative Poetry Duke University Press, 1998 |
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Professor Marshall Grossman Editor, Aemilia Lanyer: Gender, Genre, and the Canon University of Kentucky Press, 1998 |
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Professor Jane Donawerth Frankenstein's Daughters: Women Writing Science Fiction Syracuse University Press, 1997 |
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Professor of the Practice Michael Olmert Milton's Teeth and Ovid's Umbrella: Curiouser and Curiouser Adventures in History Touchstone Publishing, 1996 |
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Professor Jane Donawerth Co-editor, Utopian and Science Fiction by Women: Worlds of Difference Syracuse University Press, 1994 |
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Professor Kent Cartwright Shakespearean Tragedy and Its Double: The Rhythms of Audience Response Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991 |
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Professor Theodore Leinwand The City Staged: Jacobean Comedy, 1603-1613 The University of Wisconsin Press, 1986 |
Upcoming Events
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Thursday, November 8, 2012
News
Resources
- Medieval and Early Modern Field Committee for Graduate Students & Faculty
- Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal
- Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities
- Folger Shakespeare Library
- George Washington University, Medieval and Early Modern Studies Institute
- Library of Congress
- Dumbarton Oaks
Contact Us
For further information about graduate study at the Department of English, University of Maryland, please contact:
Sangeeta Ray, Director of Graduate Studies (rays@umd.edu), or
Elizabeth Bearden, Medieval and Renaissance Area Group Coordinator (ebearden@umd.edu)
Potential students are also encouraged to communicate directly with
members of the Renaissance faculty about individual areas of study.
