The contemplative life: Research interests and projects

Curriculum vitae

• Education:
  • Ph.D., University of Michigan, spring 2003 (expected); field: English Language and Literature
    Dissertation: The Poetics of Memory in Early Modern England
  • M.A., University of Michigan, December 1999
  • B.A., with honors, University of Chicago, June 1997
    Thesis: "'This Novelty on Earth': Milton, Eve, and the Problems of Theodicy in Paradise Lost"
• Research interests:
  • late-medieval and Renaissance English literature
  • poetry of the English Renaissance and early seventeenth century
  • twentieth-century theories of the lyric
  • prosody, meter, and poetic form
  • psychoanalytic theory
  • theories of memory and the mnemonic
  • classical works in English translation
• Teaching: See the teaching section of this site for details.
• Articles:
  • "Off the Subject: Rhyme, Distraction, and Forgetfulness in Early Modern Poetic Theory" (forthcoming in Lethe's Legacy: Sites of Forgetting in Early Modern English Literature and Culture, ed. Christopher Ivic and Grant Williams [Routledge, 2004])
  • "Shakespeare's Sonnets and the Art of Memory" (in preparation)
• Presentations:
  • "'Every red letter': Richard Crashaw's Perverse Art of Memory" (talk presented at the 10th annual Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies conference, November 16, 2002; read the conference program) (abstract)
  • "Rhyme and the Memory of It" (talk presented at the "New Formalisms and the Lyric in History" conference)
  • "Performing Sorrow: Melancholia and Reformation Aesthetics in The Winter's Tale" (talk presented at the Early Modern Colloquium's "On Religious Grounds" conference) (abstract)
  • "Spenser's Castle of Alma and the Early Modern Tongue" (talk presented as part of the 1999 English Graduate Group symposium) (abstract)
• Committee work:
  • Early Modern Colloquium steering committee, 2000-present
  • Early Modern Colloquium web page maintenance, fall 2002-present
  • Conference organizer for "New Formalisms and the Lyric in History" (see above)
  • English Graduate Group steering committee, 1998-1999
• Professional affiliations:
  • Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies
  • Modern Language Association of America
  • Renaissance Society of America

Still curious? Read an early version (extremely out of date at this point) of my reading lists for my preliminary exams.

Links to other literary and academic sites can be found on my link page. If you'd like a more complete version of my curriculum vitae, e-mail me at alwatson AT umich DOT edu.