Research
My research has many folds. I maintain abiding interest in form, language, printed books, entertainment, digital methods, and the term "premodern." Lots of other stuff too!
Here's a roundup of some of my publications and activities.
Here's a roundup of some of my publications and activities.
Current Projects
I am currently working on a critical edition of Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost for Cambridge University Press's new series of Shakespeare plays. I like to say I was born to edit this play, with its fulsome wordplay, intense meta-theatricality, and unconventional ending.
I am also in the beginning stages of a book about modernity--or, more properly, on the premodernity of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. The gut instinct behind this book is my sense that, if we want to understand our post- or late modern world, we could do worse than look to premodern England.
I am also in the beginning stages of a book about modernity--or, more properly, on the premodernity of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. The gut instinct behind this book is my sense that, if we want to understand our post- or late modern world, we could do worse than look to premodern England.
Second Book - out now!
In 2025, Cambridge University Press published How the World Became a Book in Shakespeare's England. Here is big public talk I gave about the book. This book explores the way the language of books reshaped English culture. Think, for instance, of Don Armado's boast in Love's Labour's Lost that he is "for whole volumes in folio." Think too of the polemicists who, in the 1630s and 40s, weaponized the language of print for rhetorical effect. Think, moreover, of Royal Society members in the later 1600s who would appeal (like Puritans before them) to the printed book as a metaphor for the natural world. I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I enjoyed writing it!
First Book
I am author of Shakespeare in the Marketplace of Words, published in 2017 by Cambridge University Press and released in paperback in 2022. (Here is a link to the Amazon page.) In this book, I argue that Shakespeare's plays established positions on an emerging market in which words and forms circulated. I reinterpret five of Shakespeare's best-known plays by examining his use of peculiar formal features in the context of the marketplace of words, where those features had traceable exchange values. This book makes extensive use of the 2-billion-word Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership (EEBO-TCP) database. The book has been reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement, the Review of English Studies, Modern Philology, Shakespeare Quarterly, Renaissance Quarterly, SEL, Cahiers Élisabéthains, and Textual Practice (these last two I'm especially proud of!).
Articles
"The Sentence." In The Oxford Handbook on Philip Sidney, ed. Catherine Bates, 495-506. Oxford UP, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198859451.013.29.
I don't think I've had more fun writing an essay than I did this one on Sidney's sentences.
“Abstraction as Shakespearean Interface.” With Suzanne Tanner. In The Routledge Handbook of Shakespeare and Interface, ed. Cliff Werier and Paul Budra, 116-30. New York: Routledge, 2022. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367821722.
I was privileged to write this essay with the incomparable Suzanne Tanner. We explore how all kinds of users access Shakespeare by way of all kinds of abstractions.
"What Books Taste Like: Bacon and the Borders of the Book." Textual Cultures 14.1 (2021): 97-105.
A part of the book monograph I'm writing, an excerpt from Chapter Five ("The Bookish Sensorium").
“Computational Philology.” Memoria Di Shakespeare. A Journal of Shakespearean Studies 7 (December 31, 2020). https://doi.org/10.13133/2283-8759/17248.
This article, which began as a paper on a Shakespeare Association Panel I organized, was a genuine pleasure to write. Although I wish I'd had another two months to work on it (especially since several relevant Critical Inquiry articles appeared after I completed it), it nevertheless articulates my basic position on the value and limits of computational methods.
“Renaissance Big Books and Few Readers.” In New Ways of Looking at Old Texts, VI: Papers of the Renaissance English Text Society, ed. Arthur F. Marotti, 209-218. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2020.
This article represents an initial foray into my "Bookish Words" project, described above. Initially presented at the Renaissance Society of America conference, this short essay examines the adjectives "big," "large," and "great" as they were applied to "book" in early modern England.
“Shakespeare and the Experimental Classroom.” In Creating the Pre-Modern in the Post-Modern Classroom, ed. Anna Riehl Bertolet and Carole Levin, 65-82. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2018.
Really, this essay was just a chance to show some of the extraordinarily creative work my Shakespeare students do in class (Othello cupcakes, anyone?).
“William Shakespeare’s Mucedorus and the Market of Forms,” Renaissance Drama 46, no. 1 (March 1, 2018): 57–86, https://doi.org/10.1086/697174.
This article, about how much fun it is to watch Mucedorus, was so much fun to write. I was especially excited to make a few discoveries about dramatic structure and title page claims.
“Ben Jonson’s Dead Body: Henry, Prince of Wales and the 1616 Folio.” Huntington Library Quarterly 79 no. 1 (Spring 2016): 63-92.
In this speculative article, I read Ben Jonson's 1616 folio Workes as a belated grief book for Henry, Prince of Wales.
“The Stylistic Self in Richard II,” Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 28 (2015): 123-51.
This article, which appears in revised form in my first book, shows how Richard II's use of reflexive pronouns call up a Stoic notion of the self that had a political charge in late Elizabethan England.
“Parentheses and Privacy in Philip Sidney’s Arcadia,” Studies in Philology 107, no. 3 (Summer 2010): 310-35. doi:10.1353/sip.0.0055.
My scholarly interest in the parenthesis (surely a product of my constant use of the figure?) began with this exploration of Philip Sidney's use of parentheses to create a more private rhetorical structure in the public narrative of the Arcadia.
I don't think I've had more fun writing an essay than I did this one on Sidney's sentences.
“Abstraction as Shakespearean Interface.” With Suzanne Tanner. In The Routledge Handbook of Shakespeare and Interface, ed. Cliff Werier and Paul Budra, 116-30. New York: Routledge, 2022. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367821722.
I was privileged to write this essay with the incomparable Suzanne Tanner. We explore how all kinds of users access Shakespeare by way of all kinds of abstractions.
"What Books Taste Like: Bacon and the Borders of the Book." Textual Cultures 14.1 (2021): 97-105.
A part of the book monograph I'm writing, an excerpt from Chapter Five ("The Bookish Sensorium").
“Computational Philology.” Memoria Di Shakespeare. A Journal of Shakespearean Studies 7 (December 31, 2020). https://doi.org/10.13133/2283-8759/17248.
This article, which began as a paper on a Shakespeare Association Panel I organized, was a genuine pleasure to write. Although I wish I'd had another two months to work on it (especially since several relevant Critical Inquiry articles appeared after I completed it), it nevertheless articulates my basic position on the value and limits of computational methods.
“Renaissance Big Books and Few Readers.” In New Ways of Looking at Old Texts, VI: Papers of the Renaissance English Text Society, ed. Arthur F. Marotti, 209-218. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2020.
This article represents an initial foray into my "Bookish Words" project, described above. Initially presented at the Renaissance Society of America conference, this short essay examines the adjectives "big," "large," and "great" as they were applied to "book" in early modern England.
“Shakespeare and the Experimental Classroom.” In Creating the Pre-Modern in the Post-Modern Classroom, ed. Anna Riehl Bertolet and Carole Levin, 65-82. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2018.
Really, this essay was just a chance to show some of the extraordinarily creative work my Shakespeare students do in class (Othello cupcakes, anyone?).
“William Shakespeare’s Mucedorus and the Market of Forms,” Renaissance Drama 46, no. 1 (March 1, 2018): 57–86, https://doi.org/10.1086/697174.
This article, about how much fun it is to watch Mucedorus, was so much fun to write. I was especially excited to make a few discoveries about dramatic structure and title page claims.
“Ben Jonson’s Dead Body: Henry, Prince of Wales and the 1616 Folio.” Huntington Library Quarterly 79 no. 1 (Spring 2016): 63-92.
In this speculative article, I read Ben Jonson's 1616 folio Workes as a belated grief book for Henry, Prince of Wales.
“The Stylistic Self in Richard II,” Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 28 (2015): 123-51.
This article, which appears in revised form in my first book, shows how Richard II's use of reflexive pronouns call up a Stoic notion of the self that had a political charge in late Elizabethan England.
“Parentheses and Privacy in Philip Sidney’s Arcadia,” Studies in Philology 107, no. 3 (Summer 2010): 310-35. doi:10.1353/sip.0.0055.
My scholarly interest in the parenthesis (surely a product of my constant use of the figure?) began with this exploration of Philip Sidney's use of parentheses to create a more private rhetorical structure in the public narrative of the Arcadia.
Roundups and Reviews
“How to Concern Yourself with Shakespeare Books.” Review essay of Adam Hooks, Selling Shakespeare and Kidnie, M.J. and Sonia Massai, Shakespeare and Textual Studies. Shakespeare Studies 46 (2018): 239-58.
A review essay of two of my favorite books. I manage to shoehorn a few Bruno Latour quotations in, for good measure.
“Digital Resources for Early Modern Studies,” SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 58, no. 2 (June 7, 2018): 445–72.
A roundup of as many digital resources and tools for early modern studies as I could find. So much fun to write, but also very difficult.
“Studies in Books and their People; or, The New Boredom 2.0.” Review essay of Lukas Erne, Shakespeare and the Book Trade, Jeffrey Todd Knight, Bound to Read, and Shakespeare’s Stationers, ed. Marta Straznicky. Shakespeare Studies 43 (2015): 211-33.
A review essay of three exciting and thoughtful books about books and the people who made them.
A review essay of two of my favorite books. I manage to shoehorn a few Bruno Latour quotations in, for good measure.
“Digital Resources for Early Modern Studies,” SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 58, no. 2 (June 7, 2018): 445–72.
A roundup of as many digital resources and tools for early modern studies as I could find. So much fun to write, but also very difficult.
“Studies in Books and their People; or, The New Boredom 2.0.” Review essay of Lukas Erne, Shakespeare and the Book Trade, Jeffrey Todd Knight, Bound to Read, and Shakespeare’s Stationers, ed. Marta Straznicky. Shakespeare Studies 43 (2015): 211-33.
A review essay of three exciting and thoughtful books about books and the people who made them.
Computational Text Analysis
I usually avoid identifying myself as a 'digital humanist' or referring to my work as 'digital humanities.' Nevertheless, I maintain an interest in using computers to study texts and language. In the last few years, I have become an enthusiastic user of the Python programming language, and I have worked closely with the EEBO-TCP data using techniques of natural language processing, machine learning, statistical modelling, and other forms of computational analysis. Much of this work has not yet been published (though see "Computational Philology" above).
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