Hoyt Hall Laramie, WY University of Wyoming Phone: +1 (732) E. University Avenue

Transcription

1 DR. RYAN J. CROFT Work Address Home Address English Department E. Baker St., Apt. A Hoyt Hall Laramie, WY University of Wyoming Phone: +1 (732) E. University Avenue rcroft2@uwyo.edu Laramie, WY EDUCATION Ph.D., English, Pennsylvania State University (2011) M.A., English, Pennsylvania State University (2006) B.A., English, Rutgers University (2004) CURRENT EMPLOYMENT Visiting Assistant Professor, University of Wyoming Fall 2012 Spring 2015 PRINT PUBLICATIONS Sidney s Wounds: Poetic Physicality, Revision, and Remembrance in the Sidney Circle, Sidney Journal 31.2 (2013): Sanctified Tyrannicide: Tyranny and Theology in John Ponet s Shorte Treatise of Politike Power and Edmund Spenser s The Faerie Queene, Studies in Philology (2011): Revise and Resubmit In Progress Review: In this well-written and insightful essay Croft successfully argues for Spenser s debt to this important Marian exile. Joan Fitzpatrick, Year s Work in English Studies 92 (2013): 323 Spenser, Shakespeare, and Embodying the Ruines of Rome in Titus Andronicus, Spenser Studies Greville, Sidney, and the Problem of Poetic Physicality in Caelica George Chapman s Ovid s Banquet of Sense and the Hand of the Elizabethan Poet WEB PUBLICATION Embodying Race and Language: Geohumoralism and Renaissance Proto-Linguistics in Shakespeare s Othello and The Tempest, Shakespeare: From the Globe to the Global, The Folger Shakespeare Institute, Washington, DC (2012) Web Address:

2 Dr. Ryan J. Croft 2 BOOK PROJECT Anatomizing the Elizabethan Writer: Poetic Physicality in Sonnet Sequences from Sidney to Shakespeare This study offers a fresh explanation behind the Elizabethan fashion for sonnet sequences: namely, that poets used the genre to re-define the physical experience of composition, or poetic physicality. This new critical term indicates the experience of poetic composition in its corporeal, emotional, and material aspects, including writing tools, as well as the environment within which the poet composes. In Elizabethan sonnet sequences, one finds different, even competing, understandings of poetic physicality. That is, rather than merely being derivative of Petrarch or of one another, each sonneteer describes the physical and affective nature of composition in his or her own individual way. At the same time, a general trend in depictions of poetic physicality is visible over the course of the 1590s. In Sir Philip Sidney s inaugural sonnet sequence, Astrophil and Stella, poetic composition is both an oral and passionate activity, as befits the poems original manuscript circulation. However, later sonneteers, such as Spenser and Shakespeare, emphasize the poet s writing hand and reason over orality and emotion, forging a brain-hand connection rather than a holistic view of composition as also involving the heart and lungs. In this way, later Elizabethan sonnet sequences indicate a new cultural emphasis on writing and printing, as opposed to a primarily oral poetic physicality. Besides attending to historians and theorists of orality and writing such as Fox, Ong, and Derrida this study also uniquely combines the methodologies of body, material, and authorship criticism. Ultimately, this book demonstrates how printed sonnet sequences presented the writer s body, passions, and mental processes in a new way publicly, anatomizing authorship for the first time. DIGITAL HUMANITIES PROJECT [IN PROGRESS] The Medieval and Renaissance Roots of Star Wars, Wyoming Scholars Repository. Web Address: This online resource for teachers provides video essays that analyze the links between Star Wars, on the one hand, and Medieval and Renaissance culture, on the other. The intent is for these videos to be used in high school and college classes on literature, history, and religion. All of the current video essays were created by students in my 4000-level Digital Humanities course. More videos will be added during this academic year ( ). Sample Video: Allison Cetak, Heads will Roll : Princess Leia and Judith as Heroines Defending their Dignity and People, The Medieval and Renaissance Roots of Star Wars (2014) Web Address: TELEVISION INTERVIEW Star Wars and Medieval Literature, Wyoming Signatures, UWTV-Wyoming PBS, Air Date: August 24, YouTube Link:

3 Dr. Ryan J. Croft 3 VISITING LECTURES Our Lady in Star Wars: Marian Typology Across the Two Trilogies of George Lucas, before the Undergraduates at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana; December 4, 2014 Christ and the Harrowing of Hell in Star Wars, Professor Francesca Murphy s Theology Course: Christ the Beautiful, University of Notre Dame, Indiana; December 4, 2014 CONFERENCES Literature Lost in Transition Summit. Topic: Getting the Gist: Examining Close Reading and the Common Core State Standards. Wyoming School-University Partnership, October 2013 Petrarch, Sidney, and Shakespeare: Sonnets and the Poetic Physicality of Respiration. Seminar: Matter, Perception, and Cognition in the Renaissance. Directed by Elizabeth Spiller Shakespeare Association of America, April 2012 Hand in hand with wandring steps and slow : Spenser and Milton on Marriage. Renaissance Society of America, March 2012 Embodying Roman Ruins: Spenser, Shakespeare, and Emblematic Technique in Titus Andronicus. International Congress on Medieval Studies, May 2008 Jesuits, Plain Style, and Resistance: The Catholic Response to Protestant Constructions of Rhetorical Identity. Conference on College Composition and Communication, March 2007 RESEARCH INTERESTS AWARDS The Body, Emotions, and Consciousness in English Renaissance poetry and drama, including the Humors, the Heart and its Passions, Respiration, and the Faculties especially their roles in Writing; Oral Composition and Poetic Performance; Manuscript Culture and the Materiality of Writing; Intersections between Physicality, Race, and Language on the Renaissance Stage; the Body and Voice of the Renaissance Actor; Gendering the Act of Writing. Medieval and Renaissance Religion, including the Protestant and Catholic Reformations; Star Wars and Literature NEH Summer Institute for College and University Teachers Summer 2011 Shakespeare: From the Globe to the Global Directed by Michael Neill at the Folger Shakespeare Library Penn State s Institute for the Arts and Humanities: Dissertation Fellowship Spring 2010

4 Dr. Ryan J. Croft 4 Folger Institute Fellowship: Researching the Archives Fall 2008 Spring 2009 A year-long dissertation seminar led by Jean Howard and Linda Levy Peck at the Folger Shakespeare Library COURSES TAUGHT AT UNIVERSITY OF WYOMING (12 Total Sections) LITERATURE (11 TOTAL SECTIONS) Introduction to Literature/General Humanities Courses Introduction to Literature: Science Fiction (Linguistics Theme) Introduction to Literature: Star Wars and Medieval Literature Freshman Honors Colloquium: Western Literature (Homer to Shakespeare) Upper-Level/Major Courses British Literature to 1798 (2 sections) Chaucer Milton and Women Writers Shakespeare: Tragedies and Romances Digital Humanities Online Medievalisms: Star Wars and Medieval Literature Literary Theory (Senior Seminar) COMPOSITION (4 TOTAL SECTIONS) Rhetoric and Composition (for incoming at-risk students) Business Writing/Writing in The Professions (including online instruction) COURSES TAUGHT AT PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY (29 Total Sections) LITERATURE (7 TOTAL SECTIONS) Introduction to Literature/General Humanities Courses Arthurian Legend Science Fiction Shakespeare Shakespeare and Film Upper Level/Major Courses British Literature to 1798 The English Renaissance COMPOSITION (22 TOTAL SECTIONS) Rhetoric and Composition Rhetoric and Composition/Photography (summer course for incoming students)

5 Dr. Ryan J. Croft 5 Business Writing (including service project) Technical Communication (including recommendation report) Writing in the Social Sciences (ethnography) FUTURE COURSE PLANS SERVICE History of the English Language Shakespeare s Dramatic Contemporaries Introduction to Poetry Renaissance and Modern Revenge Tragedies Literature from and about the War of the Roses (including Game of Thrones) UNIVERSITY OF WYOMING University Assessment: Close Reading Skills of Undergraduates Spring 2014 Led an assessment exercise, again evaluating the close reading skills of undergraduates, this time through the use of three elegies and a focus on students abilities to recognize diction, imagery, and tone University Assessment: Close Reading Skills of Undergraduates Spring 2013 Helped design and administer three tests to evaluate the developing abilities of undergraduates to close-read poetry. Created charts from the data that were included in the English Department s assessment report, leading to the keeping of Tier 2 status. Data and charts were also included in the Department s annual overall report PENNSYLVANNIA STATE UNIVERSITY Assistant to the Weiss Chair Spring 2008 Helped coordinate and assemble The Early 17 th Century and the Roots of Modernity Lecture Series, a set of interdisciplinary classes and public lectures co-sponsored by the Institute for the Arts and Humanities at Penn State and involving the disciplines of Renaissance Art, Music, and Literature Renaissance Reading Group Fall 2007 Spring 2008 Selected readings, organized meetings, and maintained interdisciplinary Renaissance listserv LANGUAGES (Reading) Latin French Old English PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS Modern Language Association Renaissance Society of America Shakespeare Association of America