Ethan Anderson is working on the development of the essay form in Early Modern England. He has related interests in writing and rhetoric, the creation of literary-historical narratives, and modern creative nonfiction prose. He identifies as an early modernist with one foot in the doorway of late medieval history and literature. Outside of this, he is a great fan of Chaucer and Shakespeare, among other things.
Early Modern literature; writing and rhetoric; the essay in English; literary history
Sarah Baber is a Teaching and Research Postdoctoral Fellow in English at the University of Notre Dame. Her book project examines musical and metaphysical harmony in works by William Shakespeare, Margaret Cavendish, and John Milton. At Notre Dame, Sarah offers literature seminars on lovesickness from Shakespeare to Austen; early modern adaptation; and Milton’s Paradise Lost.
Early modern literature, Romanticism, music, film and media studies
I am fascinated by how the rhetorical and thematic constructions of race in postbellum American literature have influenced broader racial narratives within US culture. I intend to use the types of questions that Morrison invokes in “The Trouble with Paradise” as a guide for my research: What does a “race specific/race free” language look like? To what degree—as readers—do we depend on racial markers and other identity signposts to navigate literature? What, if any, is the reconciliatory potential in language? I will draw from literary theory, political theory, and cultural studies to trace how this language operates with the ultimate aim of advancing Morrison’s linguistic project.
20th and 21st century American Literature; African American Literature; Postcolonial Literature; Critical Race Theory; Gender and Sexuality Studies.
Spencer Clark French (Ph.D. in English, M.A. in American Literature, University of Notre Dame; M.A.R. in Religion and Literature, Yale Divinity School) is a Post-Doctoral Teaching Scholar at the University of Notre Dame, currently instructing in the departments of English and American Studies. Spencer’s first critical monograph, “Religion and Resistance in the Poetry of the Americas” centers on interhemispheric poetry of the 20th and 21st Centuries. He is particularly interested in the ways that poets resist, revive, or reimagine religious language for the sake of social justice. In the face of old binaries—secular/sacred or personal/political—so many poets of the Americas have turned to religious traditions to reshape the world around them: whether Denise Levertov’s poetic reconsideration of the Hebrew prophets in the mid-century to combat militarism in Vietnam, Lucille Clifton’s exegetically-resistant renderings of biblical characters to counteract the ways that anti-blackness informs Christian exegesis, Carolyn Forché’s articulation of the relationship between religious tradition and the poetry of witness, or Ernesto Cardenal’s distinct, revolutionary rendering of all three—prophecy, exegetical resistance, and witness.
In addition to his monograph, Spencer is also currently translating the Spanish poetry of the Afro-Colombian poet Rómulo Bustos Aguirre into English as well as working on an article on Walt Whitman and theories of literary influence in the poetry of the Americas.
In the classroom, Spencer is committed to justice-oriented pedagogy. Following in the tradition of Paolo Freire and bell hooks, Spencer tries to create the conditions for learning that is at once liberative, critically sound, and engaged.
Spencer finds himself continually moved by the work and thought of James Baldwin, Rómulo Bustos Aguirre, Marilynne Robinson, José Martí, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Thomas Merton, Roque Dalton, Mahmoud Darwish, Simone Weil, Paolo Freire, Ross Gay, Gwendolyn Brooks, Audre Lorde, Wendell Berry, June Jordan, among many others.Outside of scholarly inquiry, Spencer is poet, playwright, and writer of creative non-fiction, a teacher of community-based poetry workshops, a mediocre salsa lead, a gardener, and a lover of the beautiful, complicated, beautiful city of South Bend, IN.
20th and 21st Century American Literature; Religion and Literature; Social Movements and Literature; Poetry of the Americas; Poetry and Peace Studies; Archival Theory; Lyric Theory; The Public Life of Poetry
Kristen Sieranski is a Teaching and Research Postdoctoral Fellow. Her research focuses on representations of ghosts on stage, particularly the ways writers use haunting as a mechanism to think about personal, community, or national traumas in the aftermath of colonization. Some of the key questions of her research include: How does a ghost on stage differ from a ghost on a page? How can writers use haunting to think about the unspeakable? If trauma resists narration, how can it be represented? What possibilities are made available by the presence of bodies in a room when staging a play? How do directorial choices surrounding the staging of haunting create meaning? What does it mean to represent a ghost with a living, breathing person? What role can drama play in processes of truth and reconciliation? How does the movement of plays through transnational networks of performance impact the function of plays in postcolonial contexts?
Modern and Contemporary Drama; Trauma Theory; Performance Theory; Ghosts and the Supernatural; Representations of the Body; Irish Literature.
Julie Wilson is a Teaching and Research Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Notre Dame. Her academic focus has shifted between texts over the years, jumping from Beowulf to Shakespeare’s history plays to Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur before landing back at Beowulf. In all the texts she examines, however, she seeks the answer the same questions: How and why do texts reference, recreate, and reveal the past? What role does a knowledge of the past have in these texts, such as a remembrance of historical figures in order to define kingship, or a recollection of previous lines of poetry in order to create alliteration or rhyme? Why is the regurgitation of this knowledge significant?
Her current research interest lies in the print history of Beowulf in the postbellum United States. From the early nineteenth century to the present, most readers have interacted with the poem as a printed text, not as a manuscript, yet few if any scholars have studied Beowulf as a physical object. By examining this obscure history, Julie hopes to demonstrate how Old English spread across the globe, how the Old English texts were printed and distributed, who actually read these texts, and how this information affects our current literary and political understanding of Old English today.
Old and Middle English, books as physical objects (bibliography), late nineteenth-century America, reception history of medieval texts, English Renaissance drama.
Ethan Anderson is working on the development of the essay form in Early Modern England. He has related interests in writing and rhetoric, the creation of literary-historical narratives, and modern creative nonfiction prose. He identifies as an early modernist with one foot in the doorway of late medieval history and literature. Outside of this, he is a great fan of Chaucer and Shakespeare, among other things. Early Modern literature; writing and rhetoric; the essay in English; literary history
Sarah Baber is a Teaching and Research Postdoctoral Fellow in English at the University of Notre Dame. Her book project examines musical and metaphysical harmony in works by William Shakespeare, Margaret Cavendish, and John Milton. At Notre Dame, Sarah offers literature seminars on lovesickness from Shakespeare to Austen; early modern adaptation; and Milton’s Paradise Lost. Early modern literature, Romanticism, music, film and media studies
I am fascinated by how the rhetorical and thematic constructions of race in postbellum American literature have influenced broader racial narratives within US culture. I intend to use the types of questions that Morrison invokes in “The Trouble with Paradise” as a guide for my research: What does a “race specific/race free” language look like? To what degree—as readers—do we depend on racial markers and other identity signposts to navigate literature? What, if any, is the reconciliatory potential in language? I will draw from literary theory, political theory, and cultural studies to trace how this language operates with the ultimate aim of advancing Morrison’s linguistic project. 20th and 21st century American Literature; African American Literature; Postcolonial Literature; Critical Race Theory; Gender and Sexuality Studies.
Spencer Clark French (Ph.D. in English, M.A. in American Literature, University of Notre Dame; M.A.R. in Religion and Literature, Yale Divinity School) is a Post-Doctoral Teaching Scholar at the University of Notre Dame, currently instructing in the departments of English and American Studies. Spencer’s first critical monograph, “Religion and Resistance in the Poetry of the Americas” centers on interhemispheric poetry of the 20th and 21st Centuries. He is particularly interested in the ways that poets resist, revive, or reimagine religious language for the sake of social justice. In the face of old binaries—secular/sacred or personal/political—so many poets of the Americas have turned to religious traditions to reshape the world around them: whether Denise Levertov’s poetic reconsideration of the Hebrew prophets in the mid-century to combat militarism in Vietnam, Lucille Clifton’s exegetically-resistant renderings of biblical characters to counteract the ways that anti-blackness informs Christian exegesis, Carolyn Forché’s articulation of the relationship between religious tradition and the poetry of witness, or Ernesto Cardenal’s distinct, revolutionary rendering of all three—prophecy, exegetical resistance, and witness. In addition to his monograph, Spencer is also currently translating the Spanish poetry of the Afro-Colombian poet Rómulo Bustos Aguirre into English as well as working on an article on Walt Whitman and theories of literary influence in the poetry of the Americas. In the classroom, Spencer is committed to justice-oriented pedagogy. Following in the tradition of Paolo Freire and bell hooks, Spencer tries to create the conditions for learning that is at once liberative, critically sound, and engaged. Spencer finds himself continually moved by the work and thought of James Baldwin, Rómulo Bustos Aguirre, Marilynne Robinson, José Martí, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Thomas Merton, Roque Dalton, Mahmoud Darwish, Simone Weil, Paolo Freire, Ross Gay, Gwendolyn Brooks, Audre Lorde, Wendell Berry, June Jordan, among many others.Outside of scholarly inquiry, Spencer is poet, playwright, and writer of creative non-fiction, a teacher of community-based poetry workshops, a mediocre salsa lead, a gardener, and a lover of the beautiful, complicated, beautiful city of South Bend, IN. 20th and 21st Century American Literature; Religion and Literature; Social Movements and Literature; Poetry of the Americas; Poetry and Peace Studies; Archival Theory; Lyric Theory; The Public Life of Poetry
14th Century Middle English Literature; Ecocriticism; Sound Studies; Medieval Marvels and Natural Philosophy
Kristen Sieranski is a Teaching and Research Postdoctoral Fellow. Her research focuses on representations of ghosts on stage, particularly the ways writers use haunting as a mechanism to think about personal, community, or national traumas in the aftermath of colonization. Some of the key questions of her research include: How does a ghost on stage differ from a ghost on a page? How can writers use haunting to think about the unspeakable? If trauma resists narration, how can it be represented? What possibilities are made available by the presence of bodies in a room when staging a play? How do directorial choices surrounding the staging of haunting create meaning? What does it mean to represent a ghost with a living, breathing person? What role can drama play in processes of truth and reconciliation? How does the movement of plays through transnational networks of performance impact the function of plays in postcolonial contexts? Modern and Contemporary Drama; Trauma Theory; Performance Theory; Ghosts and the Supernatural; Representations of the Body; Irish Literature.
Julie Wilson is a Teaching and Research Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Notre Dame. Her academic focus has shifted between texts over the years, jumping from Beowulf to Shakespeare’s history plays to Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur before landing back at Beowulf. In all the texts she examines, however, she seeks the answer the same questions: How and why do texts reference, recreate, and reveal the past? What role does a knowledge of the past have in these texts, such as a remembrance of historical figures in order to define kingship, or a recollection of previous lines of poetry in order to create alliteration or rhyme? Why is the regurgitation of this knowledge significant? Her current research interest lies in the print history of Beowulf in the postbellum United States. From the early nineteenth century to the present, most readers have interacted with the poem as a printed text, not as a manuscript, yet few if any scholars have studied Beowulf as a physical object. By examining this obscure history, Julie hopes to demonstrate how Old English spread across the globe, how the Old English texts were printed and distributed, who actually read these texts, and how this information affects our current literary and political understanding of Old English today. Old and Middle English, books as physical objects (bibliography), late nineteenth-century America, reception history of medieval texts, English Renaissance drama.