Stephanie Bahr
Associate Professor of Literature, Director of Medieval and Renaissance Studies
Stephanie Bahr specializes in early modern literature and drama. Her book project, Martyred Signs: Reformation Hermeneutics, Interpretive Violence, and Tudor Poetry, contends that the Reformation’s violent disputes about how to read the Bible had a formative influence on sixteenth-century English literature across forms and genres, from Thomas Wyatt’s lyric poetry to Edmund Spenser’s allegorical epic and William Shakespeare’s commercial stage. In 2020, the American Council for Learned Societies awarded her a fellowship in support of this research.
Bahr’s other teaching and research interests include: the intersections of medieval and Renaissance literature; print and manuscript culture; revenge tragedy; Global Shakespeare; representational ethics; gender; and film. In her teaching, Bahr particularly delights in introducing students to paleography (the study of old writing), the behind-the-scenes work of textual editing, and the vibrant ways creators from around the world have adapted and reimagined Shakespeare.
When Bahr isn’t reading or teaching literature, she can usually be found at the theatre, riding her bike, or curled up with Netflix. She has strong feelings about coffee, cats, and superheroes.
Recent Courses Taught
Performing Revenge
Shakespeare
Global Shakespeare
Shakespeare and Film
The Medium is the Message: Reading Poetry in Print and Manuscript, 1300-1600
Spectacles of Power, 1300-1647
Drama in Dialogue: from Ancient Greece to the 21st Century
Writing Sin, Sex, and Subversion in the English Renaissance
Distinctions
Honors and awards:
The Carl and Betty Pforzheimer Fellow in English and American Literature, the American Council of Learned Societies 2020-2021
Select Publications
- “On the Discovery of ‘A Sonet in the commendation of Sir Thomas More Knyght’: Memory, Martyrdom, and Poetry,” Moreana, forthcoming December 2020
- “‘Ne spared they then to strip her naked all’: Reading, Rape, and Reformation in Spenser’s Faerie Queene,” Studies in Philology, Spring 2020
- “How I Read, or ‘San Francisco Banking Contains No Trans-fats,’” , Edited by Suzanne Akbari and Kaitlin Heller, Punctum Press, 2019
- “Titus Andronicus and the Interpretive Violence of the Reformation,” Shakespeare Quarterly, Shakespeare Quarterly, vol 68, no 3, Fall 2017, pp 241–270
Appointed to the Faculty
2017Educational Background
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley
B.A., Mount Allison University
Dissertation
Reading 'Martyred Signs': Reformation Hermeneutics and LiteraturePersonal Interests
When Bahr isn’t reading or teaching literature, she can usually be found at the theatre, riding her bike, or curled up with Netflix. She has strong feelings about coffee, cats, and superheroes.
