Paul Cefalu
Frank Lee and Edna M. Smith Professor and Department Head
Degrees
- Ph.D., Chicago
Teaching interests: Early Modern English literature and culture; 17th- century poetry and prose; the first half of the survey of English literature; upper-level seminars on religious poetry; John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost; a multidisciplinary First-Year Seminar on narratives of mental illness and the expanding field of the medical humanities
Selected publications:
Divine Lisping: Milton’s Paradise Lost, Accommodation, and Biblical Interpretation (book in progress)
The Johannine Renaissance in Early Modern English Literature and Theology (Oxford University Press, 2017).
“Incarnational Apophatic: Rethinking Divine Accommodation in John Milton’s Paradise Lost.” Studies in Philology, 113:1, Winter, 2016.
“Johannine Poetics in George Herbert’s Devotional Lyrics.” ELH, 82:4, Winter, 2015.
Tragic Cognition in Shakespeare’s Othello: Beyond the Neural Sublime. Shakespeare Now! Series, Arden Shakespeare, Bloomsbury Press, 2015.
The Return of Theory in Early Modern English Studies, Volume II. Edited with Gary Kuchar and Bryan Reynolds. Palgrave Macmillan Press, 2014.
Thinking with God: Cognitive Theory, Religion, and Literature. Co-edited with Julia Reinhard Lupton, special issue, Literature and Theology (September, 2014).
“The Burdens of Mindreading in Shakespeare’s Othello, or How Iago Gives the Lie to Cognitive Theory.” Shakespeare Quarterly, 64:3, 2013.
The Return of Theory in Early Modern English Studies: Tarrying with the Subjunctive. Edited with Bryan Reynolds. New York: Palgrave Macmillan Press, 2011.
“The Doubting Disease: Religious Scrupulosity in Historical Context.” The Journal of Medical Humanities (February 2010).
“What’s so Funny about OCD?” PMLA (January 2009).
Early Modern English Literature and Contemporary Theory: Sublime Objects of Theology. Palgrave Macmillan Press, 2007.
Moral Identity in Early Modern English Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Revisionist Shakespeare: Transitional Ideologies in Texts and Contexts. New York: Palgrave Macmillan Press, 2004.