Dr. Amelia Zurcher

Dr. Amelia ZurcherMarquette University

Sensenbrenner Hall, 002

MilwaukeeWI53201United States of America(414) 288-3475amelia.zurcher@mu.edu

Professor of English and Director, University Honors Program

My teaching and scholarship focus on Renaissance and seventeenth century British literature. I am particularly interested in genre, historiography, narrative, and gender.

My book Seventeenth-Century English Romance: Allegory, Ethics, and Politics was published by Palgrave in 2007. I edited Judith Man’s Epitome of the Historie of Faire Argenis and Polyarchus for the Early Modern Englishwoman Series from Ashgate Press, and have published articles on a variety of topics in early modern literature.

I teach courses in sixteenth and seventeenth century British literature, including Shakespeare, studies in genre, and studies in gender and literature. As Director of Marquette’s Women’s and Gender Studies Program, I also teach the Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies and the program capstone course.

Courses Taught

• Gender Studies
• Shakespeare
• Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century British Literature
• Literary Theory
• Feminist Theory

Research Interests

• Early Modern Literature

Publications

• “The Trauma of Self: Hannah Allen and Seventeenth-Century Women’s Spiritual Writing,” Early Modern Trauma, eds. Cynthia D. Richards and Erin Peters.  Lincoln, Nebraska:  University of Nebraska Press, 2021.

• “Life Writing in the Irish-English Boyle Family Network,” Women’s Life Writing and Early Modern Ireland,” eds. Julie Eckerle and Naomi McAreavey. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2019.

• "Politics,” The Ashgate Research Companion to Shakespeare and Classical Literature,eds. Sean Keilen and Nicholas Moschovakis. New York: Routledge, 2017, 190-202

• "Civility and Extravagance in Timon of Athens and Urania," Mary Wroth and Shakespeare, eds. Paul Salzman and Marion Wynne-Davies. London: Routledge, 2014, 95-112.

• "The Political Ideologies of Revolutionary Prose Romance," The Oxford Handbook of Literature and the English Revolution, ed. Laura Lunger Knoppers, Oxford University Press, 2012, 551-66.
• Serious Extravagance: Romance Writing in Seventeenth-Century England," Literature Compass 8/6, 2011, 376-89.

• "The Narrative Turn Against Metaphor: Metonymy, Identification, and Roger Boyle's Parthenissa," in Go Figure: Energies, Forms, and Institutions in the Early Modern World, ed. Judith Anderson and Joan Pong Linton (NY: Fordham University Press, 2011), 73-90.

• Seventeenth-Century English Romance: Allegory, Ethics, and Politics. Palgrave, 2007.
• An Epitome of the Historie of Argenis and Poliarchus (1640), by Judith Man. For the series The Early Modern Englishwoman. Ashgate Press, 2003 (editor).
• “Rethinking the Renaissance Image of Virtue: Ethics and the Politic Agent of Early Seventeenth Century Prose Romance.” English Literary Renaissance 35 (2005): 74-101.
• “Untimely Monuments: Stoicism, History, and the Problem of Utility in The Winter’s Tale and Pericles.” English Literary History 71 (2004): 903-27.

Honors and Awards

• Marquette University Teaching Excellence Award, 2008
• Mellon Fellowship, Newberry Library, 2002-3
• Whiting Fellowship in the Humanities, 1993-4
• George C. Marshall Scholarship, 1987-9

Additional Information

Teaching Schedule

Fall 2024

• 1929H/901 MWF 11:00-11:50 O'Brien Hall 305
  • Honors Foundations Methods of Inquiry 
• 1964H/901 Mon 4:00-4:50
  • Honors Peer Mentor Program
• 1964H/902 Tues 3:30-4:20
  • Honors Peer Mentor Program
• 1964H/903 Fri 3:00-3:50
  • Honors Peer Mentor Program