Genevieve Guenther
Assistant Professor of English
PhD University of California at Berkeley
Renaissance literature, literary and cultural theory
Research/Writing interests
Genevieve Guenther has research interests in early modern English and in literary and cultural theory. She is particularly interested in studying the historical contexts for what has been retrospectively characterized as aesthetic experience. She is presently completing a book about the relationship between magical practice and what she calls Renaissance instrumental aesthetics in Sidney, Spenser, Marlowe, Jonson, Shakespeare, and Milton. Guenther also has interests in the study of gender and sexuality, and she is currently beginning a project on the early modern English concept of "erotic idolatry."
Selected publications
- "Spenser's Magic, or Instrumental Aesthetics in the 1590 Faerie Queene," in English Literary Renaissance 36.2 (2006), 194-226
- "Wallace Stevens' Marvellian Intertext: 'The Garden' and 'Description without Place,'" in The Wallace Stevens Journal 31.1 (2007): 14-26
- "New-Historical Elizabeths," review essay on The Subject of Elizabeth, by Louis Montrose, in Huntington Library Quarterly 70.3 (2007)
Selected talks and papers
- "The Theology of Heterosexuality in The Winter's Tale," To Have and To Hold: Marriage in Pre-Modern Europe, 1200-1700, University of Toronto, October 2009
- "Erotic Idolatry in The Winter's Tale," Shakespeare Association of America, San Diego, April 2007
- Invited Talk, "Writing Poetry, Conjuring Demons," Huntington
Library, July 2006
- "Spenser's Strange Genius: the Mind in the Garden of Adonis and the
Bower of Bliss," International Spenser Society Conference, University of
Toronto, May 2006
- "The Permanence of Literary Autonomy and the Ephemera of Disinterest,"
Modern Language Association, Washington DC, December 2005
- Invited Paper, "Interest and Instrumentality in Early Modern Literary
Aesthetics," (Im)permanence: Cultures in/out of Time, Carnegie Mellon
University, October 2005
- Organizer and Chair, "Renaissance Performativities," Renaissance Society
of America, New York, April 2004
- Invited Paper, "Aesthetics before Kant, or the Interdisciplinarity of
Renaissance Criticism," Townsend Center for the Humanities, University of California at Berkeley, April 2003
Teaching
Courses in Renaissance literature, gender studies, literary and cultural theory
Recent undergraduate courses
- Introduction to Shakespeare (spring 2009)
- The Faerie Queene (spring 2009)
- English Renaissance Literature (fall 2008)
- The English Renaissance Lyric (fall 2008)
- Metaphysical Poetry (fall 2007)
- Genealogies of Tragedy (fall 2007)
- Growing Up in Shakespeare's Plays (fall 2006)
- Twentieth-Century Literary Theory (fall 2006)
Recent graduate courses
- Contemporary Literary Theory (spring 2008)
Selected fellowships
- Francis Bacon Foundation, Huntington Library, 2006-07
- Mabelle McLeod Lewis Memorial Fund, 2003-04
- Townsend Center for the Humanities, University of California at Berkeley, 2002-03
- Mellon Foundation, 2000-01
