Education

• Ph.D., University of Virginia, English, 2011
• M.Phil., Oxford University, English Literature 1500-1660, 2003
• B.A., The University of Alabama, English with a minor in Philosophy, summa cum laude, 2001

Honors and Awards

• Gerald F. Rubio Prize — for best article in Sidney Journal, 2015
• Spring Hill College Summer Research Grant, 2009
• University of Virginia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertation-Year Fellowship, 2006-2007
• Rhodes Scholarship (Alabama and Trinity), 2001
• Phi Beta Kappa (Alpha of Alabama), 2000

Research

Books 

• Acknowledging Marital Desire in Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Film (in progress)
• Intricate Movements: Experimental Thinking and Human Analogies in Sidney and Spenser (Routledge, 2019); Review: Danila Sokolov, Sidney Journal 38:1 (2020) 

Articles

• “Sidney’s Bad Poetry,” The Spenser Review 54 (2024)
• “La Mort de l’Auteur: James Joyce and the Birth of Writing,” in Andrew Power, ed., Birth and Death of the Author (Routledge, 2020)
• “The Faerie Queene at Finnegans Wake,” Explicator 74 (2016)
• “‘Man is Not Like an Ape’: Facing Life in Prosopopeia, or Mother Hubberds Tale,” Spenser Studies: A Renaissance Poetry Annual XXX (2016) 
• “Riding and Writing: Equine Poetics in Renaissance English Horsemanship Manuals and the Writings of Sir Philip Sidney,” Sidney Journal 32.2 (2014) 
• “‘Barbary’ in Henry IV, Part 1: Another Shakespearean Allusion to 1 Corinthians,” Explicator 70 (2012)
• “Memory, Aesthetics, and Ethical Thinking in the House of Busirane,” Spenser Studies: A Renaissance Poetry Annual XXIII (2008)

Reviews

• Quitslund, Beth, and Nicholas Temperley, eds. The Whole Book of Psalms, Collected into English Metre by Thomas Sternhold, John Hopkins, and Others: A Critical Edition of the Texts and Tunes, 2 vols., for Sidney Journal 38:1 (2020)
• Catherine Bates, On Not Defending Poetry: Defence and Indefensibility in Sidney’s Defence of Poesy, for Sidney Journal 36 (2018)
• Andrew Mattison, The Unimagined in the English Renaissance: Poetry and the Limits of Mimesis, for Sidney Journal 35:1-2 (2017)
• Steven Mullaney, The Reformation of Emotions in the Age of Shakespeare, forSixteenth Century Journal 47.1 (2016)
• Katherine C. Little, Transforming Work: Early Modern Pastoral and Late Medieval Poetry, for Sidney Journal 32.2 (2014)
• Kathryn DeZur, Gender, Interpretation, and Political Rule in Sidney’s Arcadia, for Sidney Journal 31.2 (2013)
  

Presentations

• “Sidney’s Comedy of Remarriage,” International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, 2024
• “Honors for Everyone: Developing an Honors Curriculum for Distance Learning Students” (with Darren Surman and Megan Bailey), Online Learning Innovation Summit, Tuscaloosa, 2024
• “The Whip of a Slave-Born Poet: Philip Sidney and the (Failed) Project of Masochistic Desire,” International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, 2023
• “Queer Subjectification avant la lettre: Helena and le desir de l’Autre in Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Renaissance Society of America, Dublin, 2022
• “Jealousy’s Shakespearean Socialization in The Faerie Queene,” New College Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Sarasota, 2022
• “Thinking About Transdisciplinarity with Maggie Nelson’s Bluets,” Southern Regional Honors Conference, Online, 2021
• “The Wife’s Two Bodies: Privacy and Knowledge in Renaissance Literary Marriages,” International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, 2018
• “Crossing the Art/Life Border: Shakespearean Statuary and Sidneian Poetics,” Pacific Northwest Renaissance Society, Portland, 2017
• “On Not Plucking Out the Heart of Amoret’s Mystery: Epistemological Graciousness and Interpersonal Knowledge in the House of Busirane,” International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, 2017
• “Liturgy and Movement in the Sidney Psalms and the Defence of Poesy,” Renaissance Society of America, Chicago, 2017
• “‘I Feel the Earth Move’: Geological Humanity in Spenser and Harvey,” International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, 2016
• “The Faerie Queene at Finnegans Wake,” International Spenser Society Conference, Dublin, 2015
• “The Shield of Adam: Iliad 18 and Paradise Lost XI-XII,” South Central Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Point Clear, 2015
• “Riding and Writing: Sidneian Equine Poetics,” Sixteenth-Century Society Conference, New Orleans, 2014   
• “‘Man is not like an Ape’: Posthumanist Prosopopoeia in Mother Hubberds Tale,” International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, 2014
• “Rethinking the Human in the House of Busirane,” Renaissance Society of America, San Diego, 2013
• “Sidney’s Superabundant Cave: Reading the Old Arcadia Liturgically,” International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, 2012
• “Edmund Spenser and the Halting Muse of Michael Drayton’s Poly-Olbion,” International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, 2011
• “Thinking about Fiction and Reality in the House of Busirane,” International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, 2010
• “Duality and Individuation in Sidney’s Arcadia,” New College Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Sarasota, 2010
• “Some Problems about Fiction,” Spring Hill College Faculty Friday, Mobile, 2009
• “Poetry, Movement, and Emotion in Elizabethan England,” Sixteenth-Century Society Conference, Minneapolis, 2007
• “Bernardian Iconoclasm in the House of Busirane,” International Spenser Society Conference, Toronto, 2006
• “On Literary Studies and the Disciplines,” University of Virginia Graduate English Department Conference, Charlottesville, 2006
• “Spenserian Concern in the House of Busirane,” University of Virginia Graduate English Department Conference, Charlottesville, 2005
• “Solomon’s Temple and the House of Busirane,” Sixteenth-Century Society Conference, Toronto, 2004

Teaching

Undergraduate

• Shakespearean History (Honors seminar, 2023)
• Love, Sex, Marriage, and Family: A Transdisciplinary Exploration (Honors seminar, 2020-present)
• Life as a Scholar (required introductory Honors course) (2020-present)
• Shakespeare: Love, Sex, Marriage, and Family (Honors seminar, 2010-2021)
• Shakespeare’s Plays (Honors seminar, 2010-2020) 
• Shakespeare’s Histories (Honors seminar, 2010-2018)
• Renaissance English Poetry: Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, Donne, and Milton
• Classics and Western Culture: Homer, Aeschylus, Plato, Virgil, New Testament, Augustine, and Dante
• Poetry, Movement, Thought: From Shakespeare to Stevens

​Graduate

• The Problem of the Human in the English Renaissance (Fall 2019)