HEATHER JAMES
Departments of Englishand Comparative Literature
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA 90089-0354
EDUCATION
Ph. D. in Comparative Literature, University of California, Berkeley. English, Latin, Italian. 1991
M. A. in Comparative Literature, University of California, Berkeley. Latin Literature.1986
B. A. in English and Latin Literatures, University of California, Santa Cruz. Highest honors in English literature; highest honors in Latin literature; college honors; Chancellor’s Award.1984
APPOINTMENTS
Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of Southern California. May 1998-
Visiting Associate Professor in Literature, UCSan Diego, Winter Term, 2012. Hickel Endowment.
The Bread Loaf School of English, summer 2004 (Santa Fe) and summers 2005-7 (Vermont).
Visiting Associate Professor, Claremont Graduate University. Spring 2003 and 2004.
Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature, USC. September 1995-May 1998.
Assistant Professor of English, Yale University. July 1991-June 1995.
PROFESSIONAL SERVICE
President of the Shakespeare Association of America, 2016-17. Three-year term of service on the Board of Trustees and Executive Committee,2015-18.
Editorial Board of the Massachusetts Studies in Early Modern Culture, 2009-.
Editorial Board of Marlowe Studies: An Annual, 2010-.
Editorial Board of Shakespeare Quarterly, 2008-13.
Board of Trustees of the Shakespeare Association of America, 2008-11. Elected office.
Executive Board of the Comparative Studies in Renaissance and Baroque Literature Division of the Modern Language Association, 2005-2009. Elected office. Chair, 2007-9.
Executive Board of the International Spenser Society, 2004-7.
AWARDS AND HONORS (selected)
Fletcher Jones Foundation Long-Term Fellow at the Henry E.Huntington Library, 2015-16.
Advancing Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences Research Grant, Office of the Provost, University of Southern California (25k), 2007-8.
USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute Faculty Fellowship, Fall 2007.
American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, 2005-2006.
National Endowment for the Humanities Long-term Fellowship at the Folger Library, 2005-2006.
Long-term Fellowship at theHenry E. Huntington Library, 2005-6 (declined).
The H. P. Kraus Fellowship at the Beinecke Library at Yale University, September 2005.
USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute Faculty Fellowship, Spring 2004.
Phi Kappa Phi Honors Society, 2002 to present.
Simpson Research Grant in the Humanities, University of Southern California, 1998.
Griswold Research Grants, Yale University, summer 1992 and 1995.
Morse Fellowship, Yale University, 1994-1995.
Andrew Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, 1984-6 and1990-1.
TEACHING AWARDS AND PROJECTS (selected)
Fellow in the Center for Excellence in Teaching, USC, 2003-2004, Spring 2009-2011.
“Anthologize This!” USC Undergraduate Research Program Grant, Spring 2004. Directed a team of five undergraduate apprentice editors of the Norton Anthology of World Literature.
Golden Key Honors Society Honorary Fellow, 2004-present. Faculty Adviser, 2011.
Award for Excellence in Teaching in General Education, USC, 2001.
The Arnold L. and Lois S. Graves Prize for Teaching in the Humanities in the State of California, 2000.
Innovative Teaching Grant for Teaching Renaissance Drama in General Education, Fall 2000.
The Sarai Ribicoff Award for Undergraduate Teaching at Yale College, 1994. Awarded to a junior faculty member in the Humanities on the basis of student and faculty nominations.
PUBLICATIONS
Books
Shakespeare's Troy: Drama, Politics, and the Translation of Empire (Cambridge University Press, 1997, reprinted 1999/2000). Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture. Stephen Orgel, series editor. One of twenty-four scholarly books on “Medieval & Renaissance” literature selected for Choice’s Outstanding Academic Titles, 1998-2002.
Norton Anthology of Western Literature (W.W. Norton & Co). Gen. Eds., Maynard Mack and Sarah Lawall. Editors: Heather James, Lee Patterson, Patricia Meyer Spacks, and William Thalmann. 7th ed. 1999; 8th ed. 2005.
Norton Anthology of World Literature (W.W. Norton & Co., 2001). General Editor: Sarah Lawall.
Books in Progress
Ovid and the Liberty of Speech in Shakespeare’s England. The book uncovers the relationship of Ovid, the boldest love poet of Augustan Rome, to the freedom of speech in Renaissance poetry and political thought. Chapters on Spenser, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jonson, Milton, and Anne Wharton emphasize the collaborative spirit with which English writers adapted Ovid’s generically inventive and politically ambitious poetry to engage and extend the liberty of speech in England.
Hamlet among the Buffaloes: the Graveyard and the Frontier. On adaptions ofthe graveyard scene.
Peer-Reviewed Articles and Chapters
“Ovid, Aesop, and an Aethiopian Sodomite: the Undoing of Dynastic Epic in Ariosto’s Orlando furioso.”Forthcoming fromModern Philology.
“The Ovidian Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Boy Actors: Q2 Juliet,” Shakespeare Survey 69, eds. Peter Holland and Emma Smith (2016): 106-122.
“Flower Power.” Editor’s Choice.The Spenser Review 44.2.30 (Fall 2014).5000 words.
“Wallowing and Getting Lost: Reading Spenser with Heather James” by Leah Whittington: Editor’s Choice.The Spenser Review 44.3 (Winter 2015).
“The First English Printed Commonplace Books and the Rise of the Common Reader,” Formal Matters: Reading the Materials of English Renaissance Literature, eds. Allison Deutermann and András Kiséry (Manchester University Press, 2013): 15-33.
Reviewed at
“Shakespeare, the Classics, and the Forms of Authorship.” Forum on “The Return of the Author,” Shakespeare Studies 36 (2008): 80-89.
“The Poet’s Toys: Christopher Marlowe and the Liberties of Erotic Elegy,” Modern Language Quarterly 67:1 (2006): 103-127.
“Ovid and the Question of Politics in Early Modern England,” English Literary History 70:2 (2003): 343-73.
“Royal Jokes and Sovereign Mystery in Castiglione and Marguerite de Navarre,” Modern Language Quarterly 64:4 (2003): 399-425.
“Dido’s Ear: Tragedy and the Politics of Response,” Shakespeare Quarterly 52:3 (2001): 360-82.
“Milton's Eve, Romance, and Ovid,” Comparative Literature 45:2 (1993): 121-45.
Invited Essays andChapters in Books
“Time, Verisimilitude, and the Counter-Classical Ovid,” for “Classical Sources” inShakespeare In Our Time: the SAA 2016 volume, eds. Dympna Callaghan and Suzanne Gossett.Arden Publishing and the SAA (2016).
“Classical genres: epic, tragedy, comedy satire,” in the “High Culture” section ofThe Cambridge Guide to the Worlds of Shakespeare, gen. ed. Bruce R. Smith (Cambridge UP, 2016).
“The Problem of Poetry in The Faerie Queene, Book V.” The Hugh MacLean Lecture for the International Spenser Society,The Spenser Review 45.1 (Spring-Summer 2015).
“Tales of Robin Hood and Classical Transmission in Shakespeare’s England.”A Review Essay.Shakespeare Studies 43 (2015).
“Ben Jonson’s Light Reading,” in John Miller and Carole E. Newlands, eds. A Handbook to the Reception of Ovid (Wiley-Blackwell, 2014): 246-261.
“Coming of Age in Shakespeare,” Coming of Age, ed. Kent Baxter (Ipswitch, MA, 2012).Salem Press Critical Insights Series, 2012): 108-125.
“Shakespeare’s Classical Plays,” Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare, eds. Margreta de Grazia and Stanley Wells (Cambridge University Press, 2010): 153-167.
“Coriolanus: A Modern Perspective,” in Coriolanus, eds. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine. Folger Shakespeare Edition (Washington Square Press, 2009): 297-308.
“Ovid in Renaissance English Literature,” in the Blackwell Companion to Ovid, ed. Peter E. Knox (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009): 423-41.
“Shakespeare and Classicism,” in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare’s Poetry, ed. Patrick Cheney (Cambridge University Press, 2007): 202-220.
“Shakespeare’s Learned Heroines in Ovid’s Schoolroom,” in Charles Martindale and A. B. Taylor, eds., Shakespeare and the Classics (Cambridge University Press, 2004): 66-85.
“The Politics of Display and the Anamorphic Subjects of Antony and Cleopatra,” Critical Essays on Shakespeare’s Late Tragedies, ed. Susanne L. Wofford (Upper Saddle River: Prentice-Hall, 1996): 208-34.
“Cultural Disintegration in Titus Andronicus: Mutilating Titus, Vergil, and Rome,” in Themes in Drama,vol. 13,ed. James Redmond (Cambridge University Press, 1991): 123-40.
Short Pieces
Stanford Global Shakespeare Encyclopedia, general editor Patricia Parker (Greenwood Press). Entries on “Bishops Ban of 1599”; “Baldassare Castiglione”; “Dido, Queen of Carthage”; “Translation of Empire and Studies”; and “Troy Legend.”Forthcoming 2018.
Work in Progress
“Dry Bones: Shakespeare and the Grounds of Doubt.” Shakespeare's Futures, ed., Carla Mazzio.
Reprinted Essays and Chapters
“Cultural Disintegration in Titus Andronicus: Mutilating Titus, Vergil, and Rome,” in Shakespearean Criticism 94, ed. Michelle Lee (Thomson-Gale, 2006). Reprinted from Shakespeare’s Troy.
“Ovid and the Question of Politics in Early Modern England.” Images of Matter: Essays on British Literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. Yvonne Bruce (University of Delaware Press, 2005): 92-123. Reprinted from ELH.
“Tricks We Play on The Dead.” Shakespeare’s Problem Plays: All’s Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida. Palgrave New Casebooks series, ed. Simon Barker (Macmillan Palgrave, 2004). Reprinted from Shakespeare’s Troy.
“Troilus and Cressida.” Shakespearean Criticism 71, ed. Michelle Lee (Thomson-Gale, 2002). Reprinted from Shakespeare’s Troy.
“Cultural Disintegration in Titus Andronicus: Mutilating Titus, Vergil, and Rome,” in Titus Andronicus: Critical Essays, ed. Philip Kolin (New York and London: Garland, 1995): 287-303.
Book Reviews
Liz Oakley-Brown, Ovid and the Cultural Politics of Translation in Early Modern England (Ashgate, 2006). Modern Philology 106.1 (2008).
Andrew Hadfield, Shakespeare and Republicanism (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2005). Shakespeare Quarterly 58.1 (2007): 127-30.
Syrithe Pugh, Spenser and Ovid (Aldershot, Hants, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2005). The Spenser Review 37.3 (2006): 10-12.
Jeffrey Knapp, Shakespeare’s Tribe: Church, Nation, and Theater in Renaissance England (Chicago UP, 2002). Renaissance Quarterly (2004): 369-370.
A. B. Taylor, ed., Shakespeare’s Ovid: The Metamorphoses in the Plays and Poems (Cambridge UP, 2000) and M. L. Stapleton, ed., Thomas Heywood’s Art of Love: The First Complete English Translation of Ovid’s Ars Amatoria (U of Michigan P, 2000). RQ (2002): 59-61.
Houston Diehl, Staging Reform, Reforming the Stage: Protestantism and Popular Theater in Early Modern England (Cornell UP, 1997). Shakespeare Studies, vol. 26 (1998): 343-8.
Pauline Kiernan, Shakespeare’s Theory of Drama (Cambridge UP, 1996). Modern Philology 96 (1998): 229-33.
John Watkins, The Specter of Dido: Spenser and Virgilian Epic (Yale UP, 1995). Comparative Literature (1997).
Jon Snyder, Writing the Scene of Speaking: Theories of Dialogue in the Late Italian Renaissance (Stanford UP, 1989).Qui Parle, 1990.
KEYNOTES, PLENARIES, AND INVITED TALKS (selected)
Roundtable on Liberty: Leonard Barkan, Wendy Warren, Heather James. Princeton University. November 20, 2017.
Women in Graduate School and the Profession: A Mentoring Session with Heather James and Sophie Gee. Princeton University. November 21, 2017.
“Pompey and Son.” RectorMaris: Sextus Pompeius und das Meer. Freie Universität Berlin. July 21, 2017.
“Hamlet’s Graveyard in the Art of Henry Bowler and William Jacob Hays.” Respondent: Karen Newman. Radcliffe Exploratory Seminar: Continuity and Continuation. Organizers: Ann Blair and Leah Whittington. Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. May 16, 2017.
“Ovid and the Revolutionary Eve of Paradise Lost.” Keynote speech for the 30th Anniversary of Great Books at Pepperdine University. March 22, 2017.
“Dry Bones: Shakespeare and the Sources of Doubt.” “Shakespeare's Futures:On the Arts and Sciences of Looking Ahead: 1500 -1800.” State University of New York at Stony Brook. Feb. 23-24, 20017.
“The Trials of Ovid: Ben Jonson’s Poetaster, or the Arraignment.” Ben Jonson: 1616-2016, co-organizers Martin Butler and Jane Rickard. Huntington Library Conference.September 16-17, 2016.
“The Metamorphoses and the Liberty of Speech.” Metamorphoses: A Critical Reappraisal.”The Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities.Stockholm.May 27, 2016.
“Shakespeare’s Myths of Girlhood.” USC-Huntington EMSI conference, “Remember Me”: Shakespeare in 2016. Huntington Library.April 16, 2016.
“Hamlet among the Buffaloes: the Graveyard and the Frontier.” Invited lecture at the New Mexico Museum of Art in conjunction with the First Folio Project.February20, 2016.
“The Ovidian Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Boy Actors: Q2 Juliet.” “Shakespeare’s Girls,” a paper session of the SAA. Vancouver, B.C. April 1-4, 2015.
“The Problem of Poetry in The Faerie Queene, Book V.”Hugh MacLean Lecture, International Spenser Society. MLA. Vancouver, BC.January10, 2015.
“Shakespeare's Italian loves:Boccaccio vs. Petrarch.”A Boccaccian Renaissance.Organizers: Albert R. Ascoli and David Lummis.UC-Berkeley and Stanford University. October 24-26, 2013.
“Between Worlds: Ovid in Colonial America and Caroline England.” Departments of Classics and English Literature. Texas Tech University. April 13, 2012.
“Bison Hamlet.” Early Modern British History Seminar. Huntington Library. December 3, 2011.
“Hamlet and Species Extinction.” Early Modern Colloquium, Northwestern University. October 20, 2011.
The Future of Literary Studies, 1500-1800. Annual Conference of the Early Modern Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara. March 11-12, 2011.
“A Double Stranger: Sandys’ Ovid, 1625-1642.” Early Modern Translation: Theory, History, Practice. Chairs: Karen Newman and Jane Tylus. Folger Library, Washington, D.C. March 4-5, 2011.
“Bison Hamlet.” The Next English Renaissance. University of Colorado-Boulder. September 25, 2010.
“Close Reading Without Readings.” Replacementfor Stephen Booth. SAA. Chicago, April 3, 2010.
“Foreword: Politics and Plays” and “Retrospect/Prospect.” Representing Politics on Shakespeare’s Stage. The Huntington Library, co-chaired with A.R. Braunmuller. September 25-26, 2009.
“Commonplaces, Inventories, and the Forms of Authorship.” Forms of Early Modern Writing Colloquium. Columbia Rare Books Library. Columbia University. April 25, 2008.
“The Liberty of Speech in Shakespeare’s England.” Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Cal State-Long Beach. October 24, 2007.
“Othello, Plutarch, Foucault.” Claremont Graduate University. October 1, 2007.
“Arrows from God’s Own Quiver: Sententiae in Elizabethan Drama.” 1601: the Revolt of the Earl of Essex. Department of History, Princeton University. May 18-19, 2007.
“Shakespeare and the Liberty of Speech.” Distinguished Guest Lecturer in English AT Reed College. April 19, 2007.
“Sentencing Ovid.” Plenary Session,SAA. San Diego, April 6, 2007.
“Ben Jonson and the Early Modern Trial of Ovid.” Folger Shakespeare Library. May 19, 2006.
“Slanders and Purloined Letters.” Columbia Early Modern Seminar. May 4, 2006.
“Ovid and the Liberty of Speech.” Romance Studies, Duke University. March 29, 2006.
“Parrhesia in Early Modern England.” University of Maryland at College Park. November 14, 2005.
“Ovid on the Margins.” Plenary address to the PAMLA. Pepperdine University. November 12, 2005.
“Metamorphoses of Faith in Caroline England.” Transformations: 17th- and 18th-Century Religion, Texts, Cultures. Clark Library. September 30-October 1, 2005.
“‘The Ethnicke Muse’: Pagan Inspiration at Great Tew.” Colloquium on British Studies at Yale University. September 26, 2005.
“Spenser and the Gods.” St. Andrews University, Scotland. April 13, 2005.
“The Poet’s Toys, or the Political History of Elegy.” University of Pennsylvania. January 23, 2004.
“Shakespeare’s Learned Heroines in Ovid’s Schoolroom.” University of Chicago. September 22, 2003.
“An Aethiopian Sodomite in Paris: the Orlando Furioso.” Newberry Library in Chicago. September 20, 2003.
“Rules of the Game: Royal Jests and Sovereign Mystery.” Yale University. March 7, 2002.
“Fables of Absolutism in Castiglione and Marguerite de Navarre.” Princeton University. March 5, 2002.
“Cultural Wars/Literary History.” Keynote speaker at “Icons of Change: Word and Image in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.” The Citadel. Charleston, South Carolina. Feb. 8, 2002.
“Mixing It Up: Contaminations of Form in the Renaissance.” Keynote speaker at the Graduate Student Conference at Harvard. May 12, 2000.
CONFERENCES AND PAPERS (selected)
Chair of “The End of Humanities.” Shakespeare Association of America.Los Angeles. April, 2018.
“The Truth of Verisimilitude: Reading Ekphrasis.” Sixteenth Century Society Conference. Bruges, Belgium.August 18-20, 2016.
“Envy at the End of The Faerie Queene, Book V.” International Spenser Society.Dublin. June 21, 2015.
“Flower Power.” Renaissance Society of America.NYC.March 29, 2014.
“The Graveyard and the Frontier: Hamlet among the Buffaloes.”Western Literature Association. Berkeley. October 12, 2013.
“Time, Verisimilitude, and the Counter-Classical Ovid.” SAA. Bellevue, Washington. April 8, 2011.
“Elegy and Empire in Anne Wharton’s Love’s Martyr.” RSA. Montreal, 2011. March 25, 2011.
“Aromatherapy: Political Discontent in Spenser’s Flowerbeds.” RSA. Getty Center, March 20, 2009.
“Reading for the Sentence.” Chair. MLA. Philadelphia, 2009.
“Coriolanus’ Wars in Moral Philosophy.” Moral Agency. Chair: Michael Bristol. SAA. Dallas, March 2008.
“Spenser’s Narcissism.” Spenser’s Useless Loves. Chair: Jeff Dolven. MLA. Chicago, 2007.
“Peregrine Words: the Violence of Translation.” Chair. MLA. Chicago, 2007.
“Spenser’s Acoustic Worlds.” Organizer and chair. MLA. Philadelphia, December 2006.
“Grace Notes.” Conference in Honor of Harry Berger, Jr. U of South Carolina. October 12-13. 2006.
“Ovid in Exile.” Ben Jonson Seminar. Chair: Martin Butler. SAA. Philadelphia, April 14, 2006.
“Christopher Marlowe and the Poet's Toys.” RSA. Cambridge, England, April 9, 2005
“What are the Futures of Feminism?” Chair: Carol Thomas Neely. SAA. Bermuda, March 18, 2005.
“‘And Is There Care in Heaven?” Spenser and the Gods. Chair: Jeffrey Knapp. MLA. Philadelphia, 2004.
Chair and Organizer of “Languages of Blood.” SAA. Speakers: Janet Adelman, Roland Greene, Alan Stewart. New Orleans, March 2004.
“The Poet’s License.” Civil and Liberty. Chair: Thomas Moisan. SAA. New Orleans, March 2004.
“Impertinent Tales.” Medieval/Renaissance Italian Literature Division. MLA. Chair: William Kennedy. San Diego, 2003.
“The Worst Story Ever Told.” Ariosto session. RSA. Chair: Albert R. Ascoli. Toronto, March 2003.
“Ovid Among the Goths: the Poetics of Exile.” MLA. Chair: Andrew Hadfield. New York, 2002.
Respondent for “Shakespeare’s Ovid.” Chair: Lynn Enterline. SAA. Minneapolis, April 2002.
“Intimate Betrayals.” Renaissance Conference of Southern California, May 18, 2001.
Invited Chair of “Titus In Our Time.” SAA. Miami, April 2001.
“Interruptions in the Marriage Plot of Dynastic Epic.” RSA. Florence, Italy, March 23, 2000.
“The Interpretation of Time.” SAA. Chair: Thomas Cartelli. San Francisco, April 1999.
“Contamination.” Re-thinking Imitation. MLA. Chair: Shannon Miller. Chicago, 1998.
“Pity.” Spenser and the Passions. MLA. Chair: Elizabeth Fowler. San Francisco, 1997.
“Dido’s Ear.” Shakespearean Queens. RSA. Chair: Katherine Rowe. Vancouver, April 1997.
“Queer Cross-talk in theOrlando Furioso,” Queering the Renaissance. MLA. Chair: Carla Freccero. Washington, D.C. 1996.
“Spenser’s Literary History of Sexuality.” Spenser’s Psychopathia Sexualis. MLA. Chair: David Lee Miller. Washington, D.C., 1996.
“Jonson’s Shakespeare.” Literary History of and in the English Renaissance. MLA. Chair: Joseph Loewenstein. San Francisco, 1995.
“'Will the Real Achilles Please Stand Up?'” Symposium in Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque Studies. University of Miami, February 17-18, 1995.
“Room for Doubt: Epistemology, Imitation, and Marriage in Milton.”International Conference on the Advancement of Learning in the 17th Century.Sheffield, England, July 6-8, 1992.
“Hermaphroditus’ Pool: Contaminations of Source and Gender.” MLA. Chicago, 1992.
Interviews
Film interview by Paul Zalis for a 3-hour PBS special on Charlie Russell, Feb. 25, 2016.
Interview for the Arts division of Albuquerque Journal, Jan. 31 2016, “Bison Dominate Artwork at New Mexico Museum of Art.”
Film Review: “Shakespeare in Love.”Interview by Iain Kennedy for Vutopia, Time Warner. May 4, 2015.
L.A. COMMUNITY LECTURES AND EVENTS
“Uneasy Lies” Panelist. “Shakespeare and Politics” for the L.A. Shakespeare Festival. October 11, 2008. Organizer and chair: Louis Fantasia.