Chris BarrettChris Barrett

Bachelor's Degree(s): English, Princeton University, 2003
Master's Degree: English, Harvard University, 2008
PhD: English, Harvard University, 2012

E-mailcbarrett@lsu.edu
Office
: Allen Hall 212L 

 

Chris Barrett's research and teaching interests include early modern English literature, lyric and epic poetry, critical animal studies, and geocritical approaches to literature.  She is the author of articles and essays on Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton, and the twinned history of ether and laughter.  Her current book project explores anxieties (commercial, aesthetic, and political) about cartographic materials in English Renaissance literature.  Her research has been supported by the Council on Research (summer 2013) and a short-term fellowship at the Newberry Library (spring 2014).

She is the recipient of the 2014 Tiger Athletic Foundation Undergraduate Teaching Award and the 2014 EGSA Graduate Faculty Award.  In addition, Prof. Barrett is faculty advisor to Spectrum; the site author of RenaissanceLSU.blogspot.com, a venue for collating and sharing information about LSU’s early modern studies scene; and a co-founder and -organizer of the department's Works in Progress group.

Prof. Barrett joined LSU’s English Department faculty in the fall of 2012.  She received her PhD in English at Harvard University in 2012; she also holds a MA in English from Harvard (2008) and a Bachelor's Degree in English from Princeton University (2003).

Area of Interest

Renaissance and early modern British literature, with special attention to Spenser and Milton; lyric and epic poetry; geocritical approaches to literature; critical animal studies; humor studies.

Awards & Honors

English Graduate Student Association Outstanding Graduate Faculty Award, April 2014
Tiger Athletic Foundation College Level Teaching Award, April 2014
Newberry Short-Term Resident Fellowship for Individual Research, May-June 2014
Office of Research and Economic Development Junior Faculty Travel Grant, March 2014
Council on Research Summer Stipend, July 2013
Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Completion Fellowship, 2011-12
Derek C. Bok Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Teaching of Undergraduates, 2010
Bok Center Certificate of Distinction in Teaching, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011
Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Merit Research Fellowship, fall 2010
Sosland Family Graduate Fellowship recipient, 2006-2007
Presidential Scholar, Harvard University 2006-2012

Selected Publications

“The Quintessence of Wit,” invited contribution to Elemental Ecocriticism.  Eds. Jeffrey Cohen and Lowell Duckert.  Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press (forthcoming, 2015).

"On Burning: Pericles and Shakespeare's Uncanny Fire" in The Hare, August 2014.

“The Map You Cannot See: Paradise Lost and the Poetics of Navigation,” invited contribution to Renaissance Now!: The Value of the Renaissance Past in the Culture of Today. Ed. Brendan Dooley.  Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2014.

“Cetaceous Sin and Dragon Death: The Faerie Queene, Natural Philosophy, and the Limits of Allegory” in Spenser Studies vol. 28, 2013.

“Remember the Porter: Tragedy, Knock-Knock Jokes, and Other Unfunny Things” in Shakespeare Expressed: Page, Stage, and Classroom.  Eds. Kathryn M. Moncrief and Kate McPherson.  Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2013.

Entries for Durer’s Melencolia I, Saenredam’s Allegory of Sight and Map of the Northern Netherlands, and Blaeu and Saenredam’s  “Celestial globe and globe gores” in Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe.  Cambridge and New Haven: Harvard Art Museums/ Yale University Press, August 2011.

Publications in Progress:

The Underside of the Map:  Cartographic Anxieties and Early Modern English Literature.  Book manuscript in progress.

Selected Courses

ENGL 2148: Shakespeare (General Education)
ENGL 3020: British Literature to 1800
ENGL 3822: Top 40 Renaissance—A Master Class in Close Reading Lyric Poetry (Honors seminar)
ENGL 4040: Sin City—London in the Age of Shakespeare
ENGL 4147: Studies in Milton
ENGL 4148: Studies in Shakespeare—Bad Shakespeare
ENGL 7942: Space, Place, and the Renaissance City

Plus additional graduate and undergraduate independent studies in English and WGS.