William M. Russell

Professor and Chair

William Russell teaches courses on writing and early modern literature and culture, focusing primarily on poetry, classical reception, and the history of rhetoric, poetics, and literary criticism. He has published articles on such poets as Andrew Marvell and Ben Jonson and, most recently, a book, Inventing the Critic in Renaissance England, which explores how early modern English writers shaped the role of the literary critic. Professor Russell is, along with Bryan Ganaway, the co-founder and co-director of Bridging Between, a reading group for Charleston veterans and their families. He was awarded the College of Charleston’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 2018 and the College’s Distinguished Advising Award in 2020.

Education

Ph.D., English, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

M.A., English, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

B.A., English, Columbia University

Research Interests

• Early modern literature and culture
• Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English poetry
• Rhetoric, poetics, hermeneutics, and the history of literary criticism
• Humanism and classical reception

Courses Taught

ENGL 504: Early Modern Metamorphoses
ENGL 461: Epic, Translation, and Imitation in Early Modern Europe
ENGL 317: Literature and Revolution in the Seventeenth Century
ENGL 314: Humanism, Poetry, and Politics in the Sixteenth Century
ENGL 306: Milton

Recent Publications

Inventing the Critic in Renaissance England. Newark, DE: Univ. of Delaware Press, 2020.

“Literary Criticism.” In Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation. Ed. Margaret King. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014, rev. 2018.