Faculty
Areas of Specialization
- 18th-Century British Literature
- 19th-Century British Literature
- American Literature
- Bibliography and Textual Studies
- Computers and English
- Creative Writing
- Cultural Studies
- Drama
- Ethnic and Third-World Literature
- Folklore
- Language and Linguistics
- Literary Theory
- Medieval Studies
- Modern British Literature
- Poetry and Poetics
- Popular Culture
- Renaissance Literature
- Rhetoric
- Women, Gender, and Literature
Bibliography and Textual Studies
Drawing on the rich printed and manuscript resources of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, the department has a long tradition of teaching and practicing descriptive and analytical bibliography and textual editing (Moldenhauer, Winship, Woods).
In recent decades this tradition has recently been enlivened by new approaches to bibliographical and textual issues, including new historicism (Rumrich) and the history of the book (Winship) and literary public spheres. Meanwhile the emergence of the internet, hypertext and other forms of electronic textuality has emphasized the continued relevance of textual studies as the discipline that analyzes texts as recorded forms and investigates the technical and social processes of their production, dissemination and reception.
Students in this concentration study various kinds of texts (chiefly manuscript and printed, but also electronic texts, film, sound recording and others), their physical forms and versions, the technical, political and institutional facts of their creation, transmission and control, as well as their perceived meanings and social effects.