Wendy Beth Hyman

  • Donald R. Longman Professor in English
  • Chair of Book Studies

Areas of Study

Education

  • BA, Smith College, 1997
  • MA, Harvard University, 2000
  • PhD, Harvard University, 2005

Biography

I am Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Oberlin, Chair of Book Studies, and Trustee of the Shakespeare Association of America. My research and teaching interests focus on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century poetry and drama, especially in relation to intellectual history, the history of science and technology, Renaissance art and visual culture, and classical mythology. Above all, I am compelled by how literature represents—and even creates—new forms of knowledge. I believe that literary creation is a mode of world-making that invites our participation.

I am the author of Impossible Desire and the Limits of Knowledge in Renaissance Poetry (Oxford UP, 2019), which demonstrates that seduction poetry, far from being merely a trivial commonplace, was a crucial instrument in early modern intellectual life. I edited an essay collection called The Automaton in English Renaissance Literature, about how inanimate things seem to come to life, and publish regularly on early modern machines, technologies, and science. I co-edited the essay collection Teaching Social Justice Through Shakespeare: Why Renaissance Literature Matters Now (Edinburgh, 2019), which makes the case for the liberatory value of teaching historical literature, and also co-edited a special issue of English Literary Renaissance on the theme “Theorizing Early Modern Fictions.” My current projects include a collaboration with former student Clair Wang called How to Read Macbeth: A Visual Learner’s Companion, and a monograph on technologies of wonder and supernatural experience in Shakespearean romance, called Shakespeare and the Ingenious Machine.

I am passionate about teaching. I offer a wide variety of courses on early modern literature and culture, many of which also count toward Book Studies, Comparative Literature, Theater, Classics, Philosophy, or GSFS. Almost all my classes include humanities “labs” in the Allen Art Museum, Letterpress Studio, and Special Collections/Rare Book Room. I regularly teach internationally, both in Italy (Rome, Florence, and Venice/Padua), and for the ASE in Bath, England.

Recent and forthcoming classes include:

  • ENG 303: Renaissance Wonder and Invention
  • ENG 123: Introduction to Shakespeare
  • ENG 290: Shakespearean Comedy and Social Justice
  • ENG 215: Thinking with Renaissance Literature
  • ENG 400: Senior Tutorial
  • ENG 309: The Poetry of Love and Seduction in the Renaissance
  • ENG 218: Shakespeare and the Limits of Genre
  • ENG/CMPL 304: Shakespeare and Metamorphosis
  • ENG 206: Shakespearean Tragedy   
  • ENG/CMPL 308: Visuality and Materiality in Renaissance Literature
  • ENG/CMPL 306: Literature and the Scientific Revolution

Books:

  • Impossible Desire: Seizing Knowledge and Time in Renaissance Erotic Literature (Oxford UP, 2019)
  • Teaching Social Justice Through Shakespeare: Why Renaissance Literature Matters Now (Edinburgh UP, 2019).
  • The Automaton in English Renaissance Literature (Ashgate, 2011)

Articles and Book Chapters

  • “Theater as Portal: A Shakespearean Thought Experiment,” Experiential and Experimental Knowledge in Early Modern Literature, ed. James Kearney and Pavneet Aulakh (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2025). 6500 words.
  • “Minute/Minute: On Forms of Time in Renaissance Lyric,” Lyric Temporalities, Kimberly Johnson and Ryan Netzley, eds. (University of Toronto Press, 2024). 5500 words.
  • “Afterword,” Situating Shakespeare Pedagogy in Higher Education: Social Justice and Institutional Contexts, ed. Marissa Greenberg and Elizabeth Williamson (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, Jan 2024).
  • “Teaching Titus Andronicus and Ovidian Myth When Sexual Violence is on the Public Stage,” Global Shakespeare and Social Injustice: Towards a Transformative Encounter, ed. Chris Thurman and Sandra Young (Arden-Bloomsbury Global Shakespeare Inverted, 2023): 230-254.
  • “Interstitial Fiction,” with Jennifer Waldron in Theorizing Early Modern Fictions, ELR 52.3 (Aug 2022): 317-329.
  • “Beyond Beyond: Cymbeline, The Camera Obscura, and the Ontology of Elsewhere,” ELR 52.3 (Aug 2022): 397-412.
  • “Patterns, The Shakespearean Sonnet, and Conduits of Scale,” Spenser Studies 36 (June 2022): 323-336.
  • “The Inner Lives of Renaissance Machines,” Renaissance Personhood: Materiality, Taxonomy, Process, ed. Kevin Curran (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019), 44-61.
  • “Seeing the Invisible Under the Microscope: Natural Philosophy and John Donne’s Flea,” Philological Quarterly 98.1-2 (Winter-Spring 2019): 157-180. Imagining Early Modern Scientific Forms, ed. Jenny C. Mann and Debapriya Sarkar.
  • “‘Deductions from metaphors’: Figurative Truth, Poetical Language, and Early Modern Science,” The Palgrave Handbook of Early Modern Literature, Science, and Culture, ed. Evelyn Tribble and Howard Marchitello (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 27-48. Reviews: Renaissance Quarterly 72.2; Isis 110.2; British Society for Literature and Science 2018; Journal of the Northern Renaissance 2017
  • “Physics, Metaphysics, and Religion in Lyric Poetry,” Blackwell Companion to British Literature, vol. 2 (1450-1660), ed. Robert DeMaria, et al. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2014), 197-212.
  • “Embodying Rome” William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, based on the New Folger Shakespeare Editions. Eds. Barbara Mowat and Paul Werstine, dir. Katherine Rowe. Luminary Digital Media, 2014. iPad Application. 5800 words.
  • “‘For now hath time made me his numbering clock’: Shakespeare’s Jacquemarts,” Early Theatre 16.2 (December 2013): 145-58.
  • “Building a Book Studies Program at a Liberal Arts College” (w/Laura Baudot) in Past or Portal: Teaching Undergraduates Using Special Collections and Archives, Peggy Seiden, Eleanor Mitchell, and Suzy Taraba, eds. (ACRL, 2012), 206-211.
  • “‘Mathematical experiments of long silver pipes’: The Renaissance Trope of the Mechanical Bird,” The Automaton in English Renaissance Literature, ed. Wendy Beth Hyman (Farnham, Surrey; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011), 145-162.
  • “Seizing Flowers in Spenser’s Garden and Bower,” English Literary Renaissance 37.2 (May 2007): 193-214.
  • “The Unfortunate Traveller and Authorial Self-Consciousness,” Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 45.1 (Winter 2005): 23-41.

I Have several book projects underway. The first is a collaboration with a former student, Clair Y. Wang, called How to Read Macbeth: A Visual Learner’s Companion. It aims to illuminate poetry’s complex languages and allure students to close reading with revelatory illustrations. I am also writing a monograph on technologies of wonder and supernatural experience in Shakespearean romance, called Shakespeare and the Ingenious Machine.

I have several editing projects. The first is a collection of essays called Invention: Experiment and Imagination in the Renaissance. I am the “Sciences, Philosophies, and Learning” editor for the Routledge online resource, “The Renaissance World.” And with Mary Crane, I am in the early stages of work for an Oxford Handbook of Literature and Science.

My past work includes the widely reviewed edited essay collection, The Automaton in English Renaissance Literature (Ashgate, 2011). I have published essays on early modern mechanical birds, Spenser’s Faerie Queene, physics and metaphysics in early modern lyric, clockwork jacquemarts and Shakespeare’s Jack Falstaff, Nashe’s Unfortunate Traveller, metaphoricity and science, and the pedagogy of book history.

Fall 2024

Introduction to Shakespeare — ENGL 123
Thinking with Renaissance Literature — ENGL 215

Spring 2025

What is Literature: Introduction to the Advanced Study of Literature — ENGL 299
Wonder and Invention in the Renaissance — ENGL 303
Senior Tutorial — ENGL 400

Notes

Wendy Beth Hyman Elected as a Trustee of Shakespeare Association of America, Delivered Talks This Spring

March 14, 2023

Professor Wendy Beth Hyman has been elected to serve as a Trustee of the Shakespeare Association of America. She has also given three invited talks this spring: “Why the Renaissance Matters Now: Teaching the Early Modern with Integrity” (Stanford University), “Shakespeare and the Ingenious Machine” (Huntington Library), and “Intellectual Wellness: The Commonplace Book Tradition” (Cleveland Humanities Festival/Cuyahoga Community College).

Wendy Beth Hyman's Monograph Identified as an “Outstanding Academic Title”

September 5, 2022

Professor of English and Comparative Literature Wendy Beth Hyman's monograph, Impossible Desire and the Limits of Knowledge in Renaissance Poetry (Oxford UP, 2019), was identified as an “Outstanding Academic Title” by CHOICE 2021. Her co-edited collection, Teaching Social Justice Through Shakespeare: Why Renaissance Literature Matters Now (Edinburgh UP, 2019) has gone into paperback. She recently published an article, “Beyond Beyond: Cymbeline and the Ontology of Elsewhere,” in English Literary Renaissance 52.3. Along with Jen Waldron, she was guest editor of a special issue of that journal, Theorizing Early Modern Fictions. Finally, an article called “Patterns, The Shakespearean Sonnet, and Conduits of Scale” appeared in Spenser Studies 36 (June 2022). 

Wendy Beth Hyman Participates in Roundtable at the Shakespeare Association of America

November 8, 2021

Professor Wendy Beth Hyman participated in a remote roundtable, “Shakespeare and Social Justice: From Principle to Action,” at the Shakespeare Association of America and also gave an invited talk on literary imagination and Shakespeare’s Cymbeline at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She will present the lecture, “Ovid, Shakespeare, and Rape: Empowering Survivors in the Early Modern Classroom,” at the online Women and Power Festival at Shakespeare’s Globe in December.

Wendy Beth Hyman gives invited lectures

February 19, 2021

Professor of English and Comparative Literature Wendy Beth Hyman has given two recent invited lectures. The first, “How Sonnets Think,” took place remotely at Oxford Brookes University in the UK; and “John Donne’s Flea and the Scientific Revolution” was delivered to the John Donne Society. She was also recently interviewed by Jeffrey R. Wilson (Harvard University) for a forthcoming project called “An Oral History of Public Shakespeare.”

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