Biography
My teaching and research focus on early modern English literature, particularly Shakespeare, and the history of books and reading. Most broadly, I am interested in how the literatures of the past endure in the collective imagination, and how people’s interactions with past works—imaginatively, institutionally, physically—can change those works in turn. I am especially drawn to the early modern period or Renaissance because that’s when a widespread notion of the 'pastness' of the past, as we understand it, was first taking shape, and when popular media such as the printing press and the public theaters were giving writers powerful new means of exploring the uses and burdens of distant history. My first book, Bound to Read: Compilations, Collections, and the Making of Renaissance Literature (Penn, 2013) explored how readers and writers from Shakespeare’s time took apart their printed texts and recombined them, and how later collectors obliterated much of this essentially creative work as they established the libraries and literary canons that we rely on today. I am currently completing a public-facing book for Bloomsbury called Shakespeare on the Page: Texts, Books, and Readers, and I’m pursuing two longer-term book projects: one on the institution of the library and the idea of literary history, and the other on the history of literary scholarship (not criticism, scholarship) in Anglo-American academia. At UW, I co-direct the Textual Studies Program, which convenes an annual Material Texts Colloquium and a graduate certificate in manuscript, print, and digital cultures, and since 2021 I’ve served as the editor of Modern Language Quarterly: A Journal of Literary History.
Research
Selected Research
- “The Scale of Book History: Data, Distance, Description.” In The Oxford Handbook to the History of the Book in Early Modern England. Ed. Adam Smyth. Oxford University Press, 2021.
- “Institutional Forme” In The Unfinished Book. Ed. Alexandra Gillespie and Deidre Shauna Lynch. Oxford University Press, 2020. 246-59
- “Economies of Scale: Shakespeare and Book History.” Literature Compass 14:6 (2017): doi: 10.1111/lic3.12393.
- “Organizing Manuscript and Print: From Compilatio to Compilation.” In The Medieval Manuscript Book: Cultural Approaches. Ed. Michael Johnston and Michael Van Dussen. Cambridge University Press, 2015. 77-95.
- “Shakespeare and the Collection: Reading Beyond Readers’ Marks.” In Shakespeare and Textual Studies. Ed. Margaret Jane Kidnie and Sonia Massai. Cambridge University Press, 2015. 177-195.
- “Needles and Pens: Sewing in Early English Books.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 45:3 (2015): 523-542.
- “Afterworlds: Thomas Middleton, the Book, and the Genre of Continuation.” In Formal Matters: Reading the Forms of Early Modern Texts. Ed. Allison Deutermann and András Kiséry. Manchester University Press, 2013. 77-96.
- Bound to Read: Compilations, Collections, and the Making of Renaissance Literature. University of Pennsylvania Press. 2013.
- “Curatorial Readings: George Herbert’s The Temple, Quintus Curtius, and their Context.” Huntington Library Quarterly 74:4 (2011), 575-98.
- “Invisible Ink: A Note on Ghost Images in Early Printed Publications; Books.” Textual Cultures 5:2 (2010): 53-62.
- “‘Furnished for Action:’: Renaissance Publications; Books as Furniture.” Book History 12 (2009): 37-73.
- “Making Shakespeare’s Books: Assembly and Intertextuality in the Archives.” Shakespeare Quarterly 60:3 (2009): 304-340.
- Shakespeare on the Page: Texts, Books and Readers. Arden Shakespeare Fourth Series. Bloomsbury.
Research Advised
- Bassett, Andreas Patrick. Surface Impressions: Drama and Book Buying in Early Modern England. 2025. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Robertson, Carol. “Let Them Read”— The Protestant Invitation for New Communities of Readers and Hearers to Engage with Hard Ancient Texts in the English Reformation/Renaissance Era. 2023. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- George, Emily Carole. Stage Converts: Performing Moral and Religious Change in Early Modern English Drama. 2020. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.