Susanne Woods
Provost and Professor of English, Emerita
Office: Park Hall 116
Phone: 508-286-8212
Fax: 508-286-8270
Email: swoods@wheatoncollege.edu
Degrees
Ph.D., Columbia University,English and Comparative Lit.
M.A., U.C.L.A.,English
B.A., U.C.L.A.,Political Science
Main Interests
Teaching: English renaissance; early women writers; Spenser; Milton, freedom and tyranny in literature.
Administrative: curriculum, faculty development, technology
Research Interests
Current Research:
Freedom and Tyranny in Spenser and Milton, book project for Duquesne University Press.
Scholarly uses of searchable textbases.
Value and authority in renaissance texts.
Teaching Interests
Renaissance literature, early women writers, Milton, freedom and tyranny in literature
Other Interests
Selected Professional Activities Since 1985:
September, 2002, presenter, Workshop on the Future of Libraries, Council of Independent Colleges (CIC)
August, 2002, presenter, Executive Seminar of the Seminars on Academic Computing, Educause, Snowmass, Colorado
June, 2002, presenter, The Frye Institute of the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), Emory University, Atlanta.
April, 2002, reaccreditation team for Bentley College, for the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC)
April, 2000, reaccreditation team for Holy Cross College, for NEASC
February, 1998, leader, workshop on teaching, Central Pennsylvania Consortium
Spring 1997, evaluation team, English Department, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs
1994-present, Advisory Board, Renaissance Electronic Texts
August, 1994, panelist, NEH Fellowships Division
October, 1993, panelist, NEH Editions Division
June, 1993, site visit of the Center for Bibliographical Studies, UC Riverside, for the NEH
April, 1992, Accreditation team, Tufts University , for NEASC
1987-1990, R.I. Coordinator, American Council of Education Women in Higher Education Program (ACE-NIP Program)
1993-present, Editorial Board, Ben Jonson Journal
1992-present, Editorial Board, Duquesne University Press
1986-91, Editorial Board, Huntington Library Quarterly
1988-89, President, Lyrica (Society for Words and Music)
1986-89, Executive Committee, Milton Society of America
1986-88, Executive Committee, John Donne Society
1988-90, Prize Committee, Spenser Society (Chair, 1989)
1984-87, Delegate Assembly, Modern Language Association
Grant evaluator, National Endowment for the Humanities, 1986-present; also reader for various journals and academic presses.
Member: Modern Language Association, Renaissance Society of American, Society for the Study of Early Modern Women (founding member), Milton Society of America, Spenser Society, John Donne Society. Listed in Who's Who in America (since 1989), Who's Who in the East (since 1984), and Who's Who of American Women (since 1979)
Student Projects
PhD dissertations (at Brown) on Milton, Spenser, Shakespeare, and the English lyric;
MA theses and undergraduate projects (at Brown and Franklin & Marshall) on all of these, plus early women writers, romantic poetry, modern poetry.
Selected Publications, Creative Work or Performances
Books
A Handbook of Literary Feminisms (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), with Shari Benstock and Suzanne Ferriss.
Lanyer: A Renaissance Woman Poet (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). Study of Aemilia Lanyer, Jacobean poet, in relation to Spenser, Jonson, Shakespeare, Donne, and Herbert.
Natural Emphasis: English Versification from Chaucer to Dryden (San Marino: Huntington Library Press, 1985).
Editions
Paradise Lost & Paradise Regained by John Milton, intro. (New York: New American Library, Signet Classic, 2001)
Options for Teaching Tudor and Stuart Women Writers, ed., with Margaret P. Hannay (New York: Modern Language Association, 2000)
The Poems of Aemilia Lanyer (1611), ed. with introduction and notes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).
Co-General Editor (with Elizabeth H. Hageman) of a series of editions for Oxford University Press, "Women Writers in English 1350-1850," (14 vols., 1993-2003 ).
Articles
"Renaissance Englishwomen and the Literary Career," with Margaret P. Hannay, Elaine Beilin, and Anne Shaver, in European Literary Careers, ed. Patrick Cheney (Toronto: U Toronto P, 2002), 302-23.
"Making Free with Poetry: Spenser and the Rhetoric of Choice," Spenser Studies XVI (2001), 1-13.
"Women at the Margins in Spenser and Lanyer," in Worldmaking Spenser: Explorations in the Early Modern Age, ed. Patrick Cheney and Lauren R. Silberman (Lexington: U Kentucy P, 2000), 101-14.
"Anne Locke and Aemilia Lanyer: A Tradition of Protestant Women Speaking," The New Seventeenth Century: Essays in Honor of Barbara Kiefer Lewalski, ed. Amy Boesky and Mary Crane (Newark: Univ. Delaware Press, 2000), 171-84.
"Lord Morley's 'Ryding Ryme' and the Origins of Modern English Versification," in Triumphs of English: Henry Parker, Lord Morley, Translator to the Tudor Court, ed. James P. Carley and Marie Axton (London: The British Library, 2000), 201-11.
"Aemilia Lanyer" and "Rachel Speght" introductions for The Printed Writings of Renaissance Englishwoman, 1550-1640, A Facsimile Library of Essential Works, Part Two: The Poets, ed. Patrick Cullen and Betty Travitsky (London: Scolar Press, 2001)
"Teaching the Origins of Versification in Early Modern English," Approaches to Teaching Shorter Elizabethan Poetry, ed. Patrick Cheney and Anne Lake Prescott (New York: Modern Language Association, 2000), 75-80.
"Is Freedom Slavery?" Iowa Review 29:3 (1999), 36-45.
"Shifting Centers and Self Assertions: The Study of Early Modern Women," Shakespeare Studies XXV (1997), 67-75.
"Born to Write: Vocation and Authority in Aemilia Lanyer," in Aemilia Lanyer: Gender, Genre and the Canon, ed. Marshall Grossman (Lexington: Univ. of Kentucky Press, 1998), 83-98.
"Imitation and Authority in Donne's 'Anatomy' and Lanyer's 'Salve Deus,'" in Soundings of Things Done: Essays on Early Modern Literature in Honor of S. K. Heninger, Jr., ed. Peter E. Medine and Joseph Wittreich (Dover: Univ. Delaware Press, 1996), 137-51.
"Real Meter in Imaginary English," Meter in English: A Critical Engagement, ed. David Baker, (Fayetteville: Univ. Arkansas Press, 1996), 283-91.
"Aemilia Lanyer" and "Rachel Speght" introductions for The Printed Writings of Renaissance Englishwoman, 1550-1640, A Facsimile Library of Essential Works, Part Two: The Poets, ed. Patrick Cullen and Betty Travitsky (London: Scolar Press, 1998)
"Recovering the Past, Discovering the Future: The Brown University Women Writers Project," South Central Review, 1994 (11) 17-23.
"Aemilia Lanyer and Ben Jonson: Patronage, Authority, and Gender," Ben Jonson Journal I (1994), 15-30.
"The Body Penitent: An Early Calvinist Sonnet Sequence," American Notes and Queries special edition on newly discovered or newly taught renaissance material (1992), ed. Anne Lake Prescott, 137-40.
"Aemilia Lanyer," Dictionary of LIterary Biography: Seventeenth-Century British Non-Dranmatic Poets, ed. M. Thomas Hester (Columbia, S.C.: Bruccoli Clark Layman, 1992).
"Elective Poetics in Milton's Prose," in Politics, Poetics and Hermeneutics in Milton's Prose, ed. David Loewenstein and James Turner (Cambridge University Press, 1990), 193-211. Chapter cited for special mention in August, 1991 review in TLS.
"'That Freedom of Discussion Which I loved': Milton's Italian Journey and Cultural Self-definition," in Milton in Italy, ed. Mario di Cesare (Binghamton: MRTS, 1991), 8-18.
"Amazonian Tyranny: Spenser's Radigund and Diachronic Mimesis," Playing with Gender: A Renaissance Pursuit, ed. Jean R. Brink, Mary Anne Cline Horowitz, and Allison P. Coudert (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,1991), pp. 52-61.
"Freedom and Tyranny in Sidney's Arcadia," in Sir Philip Sidney: Quadricentennial Essays, ed. Michael J. A. B. Allen, et al. (AMS Press, 1990).
"How Free Are Milton's Women?" in Milton and the Idea of Woman, ed. Julia M. Walker (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1988), 11-30.
"The Rhetoric of Freedom in Sidney's Arcadia," Sidney Newsletter, 8:3-11 (1987).
"Spenser and the Problem of Women's Rule," Huntington Library Quarterly, 49:140-58 (1985).
"Vaughan's Reflective Versification," George Herbert Journal, 7:91-98 (1984). (Reprinted in The Critical Temper, ed. Martin Tucker et al., second ed., New York: Continuum, 1990)
"Versification," major article in The Spenser Encyclopedia, ed. A. C. Hamilton et al. (Toronto: Univ. Toronto Press, 1989), 1407-1412.
"The Context of Jonson's Formalism," in Classic and Cavalier: Essays on Jonson and the Sons of Ben, ed. Claude J. Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1982), 77-89.
"The 'Unhewn Stones' of Herbert's Verse," George Herbert Journal, 4:30-46 (Spring 1981).
"'The Passionate Man's Pilgrimage': Ralegh Is Still in the Running," Modern Language Studies, 8:12-19 (Fall 1978).
"Aesthetic and Mimetic Rhythms in the Versification of Gascoigne, Sidney, and Spenser," Studies in the Literary Imagination, 11:31-44 (Spring 1978).
"Ben Jonson's Cary-Morison Ode: Some Observations on Structure and Form," Studies in English Literature, 18:57-74 (Winter 1978).
"Closure in The Faerie Queene," Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 76:195-216 (April 1977).
In A Milton Encyclopedia, ed. William B. Hunter et al. (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1978-82): "Areopagitica," "William Faithorne," "John Baptist de Medina," and "Tyranny."
"'The Passionate Sheepheard' and 'The Nimphs Reply': A Study of Transmission," Huntington Library Quarterly, 34:25-33 (November 1970).
Recent book reviews: The Nation; Renaissance Querterly, Shakespeare Studies, Society, South Central Review, Seventeenth-Century News