I am the William and Annie S. Paton Foundation Professor of Ancient and Modern Literature, Professor of English and currently Co-Chair of the Committee for the Study of Books and Media.  In February 2016 I will become for the second time Chair of the cross-departmental Committee for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies.  I’m committed to the University’s diversity goals, to the globalization of our students’ experiences, and hence to the further development of Princeton’s strong position in international higher education.  I regard Princeton as a place of enormous potential empowerment for all members of its community, and I try to make my contributions serve that central purpose.  As a humanist I believe in the productiveness of teamwork in research, and remain active as a leader or participant in several international research projects.

I came to Princeton from the University of Oxford, UK, in 1999.  At Princeton I’ve served on many committees in the English Department, including several appointments committees, of which I’ve chaired eight, and of these three have been senior positions.  I’ve co-written with colleagues five tenure or promotion reports.  I’ve been Associate Chair, Acting Chair and Graduate Job Advisory Officer.  In the University I’ve served three times on the Priorities Committee, on the International Studies Council, and on the Tanner Lectures Committee.  I represent Princeton at the Folger Shakespeare Library and currently chair the Steering Committee of the Folger’s Center for British Political Thought.  

My scholarship has mostly been on early modern literature, especially the seventeenth century, and I am strongly interdisciplinary by inclination and training.  My early work concerned the literature and culture of early modern English radicalism and the roles played by literature in the British Civil Wars and the political revolution that followed (1640-1660). I’ve won NEH, Guggenheim, NHC and Folger fellowships, British Academy research funding awards, and have been a Berman Senior Fellow and Old Dominion Professor here at the Humanities Council, and a Member at IAS.

I regard my greatest success at Princeton as reviving what had become a somewhat neglected group of graduate students specializing on Renaissance topics within the English Department so that we are now a strong international force in graduate training.  Seven of my seventeen Princeton students who have completed Ph.Ds have held the Jacobus Fellowship, and two more Whiting Fellowships.  I have also sat on doctoral committees and examined Ph.D.s in the History and German Departments.  My former graduate students are now in positions at Harvard, Duke, Cal. Tech., Trinity College, Cambridge, and King’s College, London, among other places.

I live mostly in Princeton, and a little in New York.  As many know, when time permits I’ve written, recorded and performed songs with Paul Muldoon for eleven years; I’m also collaborating most productively with Andrew S. Lovett and have been delighted to play recently with Michael Smith.