About Me
I am Associate Professor of English at the University of Mississippi. My scholarship on sexuality, gender, class, race, and disability in early modern English literature has been published in Shakespeare Jahrbuch, SEL: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, JEMCS: Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Embodiment, and other venues. My research has been supported by the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Henry E. Huntington Library, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Volkswagen Foundation.
Book Publication
Rogue Sexuality in Early Modern Literature: Desire, Status, Biopolitics
From the popular chroniclers of the Elizabethan criminal underworld to the natural philosophers of the Royal Society, early modern England was fascinated by the sexual exploits of the figures they called “rogues.” This book explores the reasons for and consequences of this cultural fixation in Renaissance literary and political discourses.
Rogue Sexuality is original, compelling, and timely. It will change how we theorize the relationship between the social and the sexual in early modern texts.”
Mario DiGangi
Professor, CUNY Graduate Center
Work in Progress
Impotent: A Sexual History of Early Capitalism
My current book integrates sexuality and disability studies to reevaluate labor, race, and capitalism in early modern English literature and culture. Using “impotence” as a lens—both a legal category for parish poor relief and a marker of disabled identity—it argues that disabled identity emerged as a socioeconomic construct earlier than commonly recognized, predating modern medical discourse. It also connects this classed disability to the history of race and sexuality, highlighting how state regulation of sexuality disciplined citizens across classes to embody labor and racial fitness. Disability, therefore, was key to shaping modern political subjectivity and capitalism’s transformation of labor into human capital.
Teaching
I teach courses on Shakespeare, Milton, and early modern English literature and culture, as well as the histories and theories of sexuality, gender, disability, and class. I also advise theses and dissertations on these and various other topics.