Dr. Erin Kelly
Position
Contact
Credentials
MA and PhD (Maryland)
Area of expertise
Rhetoric; Renaissance; Shakespeare; sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English drama
Erin E. Kelly’s research focuses on intersections between sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English literature and reformation religious discourse. Currently in the process of completing a book project with the working title Performing Conversion in Early Modern England, she has published articles and essays on topics such as Foxe's massive Protestant martyrology Actes and Monuments and on post-reformation performances of cycle plays. She has served as an associate editor for the journal Early Theatre since 2011.
Students Dr. Kelly's literature classes will find that she introduces them to early printed book and manuscript history, subjects she had the opportunity to study as a participant in an NEH summer seminar entitled "The Reformation of the Book" and in a Folger Shakespeare library workshop on paleography. Her additional interests include performance theory and theatre history. She is drawing upon all of these fields in her work to prepare a new edition of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew for the Internet Shakespeare Editions project and Broadview Press.
Like many early modernists, Dr. Kelly is fascinated by rhetoric, the art of persuasive speech and writing that served as the foundation for renaissance education. She draws upon classical, early modern, and contemporary rhetorical and composition theory to help first-year students in ENGL135 (Academic Reading and Writing) develop their writing skills and to train graduate students in ENGL502 (Teaching Literature and Composition) to offer effective writing instruction. She currently serves as the advisor for the Academic Writing Program, a program within the English department that oversees courses that fulfill the university’s Academic Writing Requirement (http://www.uvic.ca/registrar/students/policies/awr/).
Courses taught at UVic
* ENGL135: Academic Reading and Writing (AWR)
* ENGL146: The Literature of Our Era
* ENGL200A: English Literature to 1660
* ENGL250: Literature and Culture (Tudor Queens and Other Boleyn Girls)
* ENGL359: Sixteenth-Century Poetry and Prose
* ENGL360: Special Studies in Shakespeare (Teaching Shakespeare)
* ENGL364: English Renaissance Drama
* ENGL366B: Shakespeare: Histories and Tragedies
* ENGL366C: Shakespeare: Comedies, Romances, and Problem Plays
* ENGL500: Textual Studies and Methods of Research
* ENGL502: Teaching Literature and Composition
* ENGL520: Studies in Renaissance Literature (Area Course)
+ Tudor Drama
+ Drama in Sixteenth-Century England
+ Shakespeare and His Contemporaries
* ENGL521: Studies in Renaissance Literature (Special Topics)
+ Religion and English Renaissance Drama
+ Rethinking Religion and Renaissance Drama
Selected Publications
* Essay, “Anti-Catholicism and Protestant Polemic in Robert Wilson’s Three Ladies of London,” Performance as Research in Early English Theatre Studies: The Three Ladies of London In Context (McMaster University, 2014-2015).
* Chapter, “Online Emblems in the Classroom” in Teaching from the Archives, ed. Heidi Brayman Hackel and Ian Moulton (MLA Options for Teaching series, 2015) 191-200.
* Article, “Conflict of Conscience and sixteenth-century religious drama,” English Literary Renaissance 44.3 (2014), 388-419.
* Article, “Introduction: Why Attend to Earlier Tudor Drama?,” Early Theatre 16.2 (2013) 165-70. Contributing editor, “Issues in Review: New Approaches to Earlier Tudor Drama,” Early Theatre 16.2 (2013) 165-249.
* Chapter, ""They use violence to him": Staging the blazon in The Rebellion of Naples" in Staging the Blazon in Early Modern English Theater, eds Sara Morrison and Deborah Uman (Ashgate 2013), 149-62.
* Chapter, "Doubt and Religious Drama Across Sixteenth-Century England, or Did the Middle Ages Believe in Their Plays?" in The Chester Cycle in Context, 1555-1575, eds Jessica Dell, David Klausner, and Helen Ostovich (Ashgate 2012), 47-63.
* Chapter, "Red-letter days in the age of digital reproduction: A consideration of how Foxe's Kalendar taught Catholics to read his book" in Modern Readings of Acts and Monuments, eds Thomas Anderson and Ryan Netzley (Delaware University Press 2009), 69-86.
* Chapter, "The Tragedy of Mariam and Early Modern English Discourses of Martyrdom" in The Literary Career and Legacy of Elizabeth Cary, 1613-1680, ed. Heather Wolfe (Palgrave 2007), 35-52.
* Article, "John Foxe, Poets, and Sir Thomas More," Moreana 42.163 (2005), 1-35.
* Article,"Jewish History, Catholic Argument: Understanding Thomas Lodge's The Famous and Memorable Works of Josephus as a Catholic Text," Sixteenth Century Studies Journal 34.4 (2003), 993-1010.