People
Wendy Olmsted
Professor Emerita
New Collegiate Division
Humanities Division
Associated Faculty, Classics (PAMW)
The University of Chicago
Chicago, Illinois, 60637
Education:
1974: Ph.D. Committee on Social Thought, The University of Chicago
1966: M.A. Committee on General Studies in Humanities, The University of Chicago
1965: B. A. magna cum laude, Bryn Mawr College.
Teaching Experience
2006+ Professor, New Collegiate Division, Humanities Division, Affiliated Faculty Department of Classics (PAMW)
2005–2006 Associate Professor, New Collegiate Division, Humanities Division, Affiliated Department of Classics (PAMW)
1995+ Associate Professor, New Collegiate Division and Humanities Division, Committee on the Ancient Mediterranean World, The University of Chicago
1979+ Associate Professor with indefinite tenure, New Collegiate Division and Humanities Division, Committee on Ideas & Method, The University of Chicago
1974–1979 Assistant Professor, New Collegiate Division, Committee on Ideas and Methods and the Humanities Division, The University of Chicago
1970–1974 Instructor, The College, The University of Chicago
1969–1970 Lecturer, The College, The University of Chicago
Research:
Books, Volumes Co-Edited, and Theses
The Imperfect Friend: Emotion and Rhetoric in Sidney, Milton, and their Contexts. Toronto University Press, May 2008.
Rhetoric: An Historical Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006.
A Companion to Rhetoric and Rhetorical Criticism. Co-edited with Walter Jost. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004, paper 2006.
“Analogies by Thought Supplied”: A Rhetoric of Simile, Comparison, and Allegory in Epic (in manuscript)
Rhetorical Invention and Religious Inquiry. Co-edited with Walter Jost. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.
Articles in Refereed Journals and Chapters in Edited Volumes
“Embodied Thinking in Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “That Nature is an Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection,” in process.
“Odysseus at the Boundaries of Pre-culture,” in Festschrift in Honor of James M. Redfield, in process, Routledge.
“Ethical Deliberation in Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Nicomachean Ethics,” Polis 30, 2 (2013), 251-73.
“To plainness honour’s bound,’ Deceptive Friendship in Shakespeare’s King Lear,” in Discourses and Representations of Friendship, 1500–1700, eds. Daniel Lochman, Maritere Lopez, Lorna Hutson. Surrey, England: Ashgate, 2011, 181-94.
“The Gentle Doctor: Renaissance/Reformation Emotion, Rhetoric, and Friendship in Sidney’s Old Arcadia,” Modern Philology, November, 2005, 156-86.
“Introduction” (with Walter Jost) in A Companion to Rhetoric and Rhetorical Criticism. Ed. Walter Jost and Wendy Olmsted. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004, xv–xvi, 1–3, 169–72, 309–10, 389–92.
“Exemplifying Deliberation: Cicero’s De Officiis and Machiavelli’s Prince” in A Companion to Rhetoric and Rhetorical Criticism. Ed. Walter Jost and Wendy Olmsted. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004, 173–89.
“Elizabethan Rhetoric, Ideology, and Britomart’s Sorrow by the Sea,” Exemplaria 14 (Spring, 2002), 167-200.
“Introductory essay” (with Walter Jost) in Rhetorical Invention and Religious Inquiry. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000, 1–7, 11–14, 131–35, 219–222, 301–304.
“Invention, Emotion, and Conversion in Augustine’s Confessions,” Rhetorical Invention and Religious Inquiry, ed. Walter Jost and Wendy Olmsted. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000, 65–86.
“On the Margins of Otherness: Metamorphosis and Identity in Homer, Ovid, Sidney, and Milton,” New Literary History 27 (Spring, 1996), 167–84.
“Deconstruction and Spenser’s Allegory,” Spenser Studies, 11 (1994), 111–27.
“The Uses of Rhetoric: Indeterminacy in Legal Reasoning, Practical Thinking, and the Interpretation of Literary Figures.” Philosophy and Rhetoric, 24 (1991). Reprinted in Rhetoric and Hermeneutics in our Time, ed. Walter Jost and Michael J. Hyde. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997, 235–53.
“Philosophical Inquiry and Religious Transformation in Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy and Augustine’s Confessions,” The Journal of Religion 69 (1989), pp. 14–35.
Reviews
Sarah Spence, Figuratively Speaking, Rhetorica 1 (2010).
Kevin Pask: The Emergence of the English Author, Modern Philology, 97, 3 (February 2000), 455–59.
Edward Berry, The Making of Sir Philip Sidney, Sixteenth-Century Studies Journal, 30, 2 (Summer, 1999), 624–26.
William C. Johnson, Spenser’s Amoretti: Analogies of Love, The Sixteenth Century Journal 22 (1991), 566.
Recent Invited Lectures and Papers
“Extraordinary Language Generating a Common world in Hopkins’ “That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection,” Panel, “When Rhetoricians Read Poetry,” Modern Languages Association Convention, Chicago, January, 2014.
Chair, “When Rhetoricians Read Poetry,” Modern Languages Association Convention, Chicago, January, 2014.
“Equality, Reciprocity, or Despotic Rule: Renaissance Friendship in Marriage and Politics,” Panel, Renaissance Society of America, Montreal, March, 2011.
“Fear is more pain than is the pain it fears: Poetic Psychology and Protestant Internationalism,” Paper for the session on Sidney and Internationalism, The International Sidney Society, Renaissance Society of America Conference, Chicago, April, 2008.
“Hospitable Interchanges: Comfort, Counsel, and Friendship in Sidney’s New Arcadia, Paper for the Sidney Session, 40th International Congress on Medieval Studies, May, 2007.
“The Rhetorical Production of Factional Emotion:Anger and Enmity in Sidney’s New Arcadia,” Renaissance Society of America, San Francisco, March 2006.
“An ‘Accompanable Solitariness’ and a ‘Civil Wildness’ in Sidney’s New Arcadia,” Renaissance Workshop, The University of Chicago, February 6, 2006.
“Dead Pitiless Laws: Law and Emotion in Sidney’s Old Arcadia,” 40th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 2005.
“Tradition and Invention: Bacon’s Aphorisms and the Essays,” Renaissance Workshop, The University of Chicago, February 2005.
“The Gentle Doctor: Renaissance/Reformation Emotion, Friendship, and Rhetoric in Sidney’s Old Arcadia,” Renaissance Workshop, The University of Chicago, November 2003.
Respondent to Papers: The Open Sidney Session, Medieval and Renaissance Conference, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May, 2002.
Significant Recent Service to the University
1988–2000 Curriculum Committee, College of The University of Chicago
1999–2000 Alternate, College Council
2001 Provost and President’s Search Committee for Dean of the College
2002 Whiting Post-Doctoral Fellowship Selection Committee – Humanities Division
1999–2004 Executive Committee Beta Chapter Phi Beta Kappa
1988–1992, 1998–1999, 2003–2006 College Council, The University of Chicago
2004–2006 Committee of the College Council
2006 Admissions Committee: Department of Classics
1999–2011 Chair of College Committee on Admissions and Enrollment: the College
2001–2011 Chair: Fundamentals Major
2010–2011 Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching
Honors and Awards
1965–1970 University Fellow, The University of Chicago
1967–1968 Teaching Assistant, Liberal Arts I (pilot for Danforth Fellows project)
1999 Honorary Member: Phi Beta Kappa
Professional Activity and Affiliations
1988 Consultant and Lecturer on Milton’s Paradise Lost for NEH, University of Wisconsin at Green Bay
1988 Reader for Young Scholars Competition, NEH