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Susanne Wofford

Professor
slw13@nyu.edu
508 - 1 Wash Pl

Office Hours
Monday 3:30 TO 5:00
Tuesday 11:00 TO 12:00
Wednesday 3:30 TO 5:00

B.A., Yale College, 1973
B.Phil., Comparative Literature, Oxford University, 1977
Ph.D., Comparative Literature, Yale University, 1982

Susanne Wofford was Dean of the Gallatin School from 2007-2022.  Before coming to Gallatin, Professor Wofford taught at Yale University and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where she served as Director of the Center for the Humanities and as the Mark Eccles Professor of English, having formerly been Chair of the Divisional Committee for Arts and Humanities and Director of Graduate Studies in English. She has been a member of the faculty of the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College since 1989 and was a Visiting Professor at both Harvard University and Princeton University. A distinguished scholar of epic poetry and of Renaissance and early modern literature, Professor Wofford is the recipient of many prizes and honors, including the University of Wisconsin Chancellor's Award for Distinguished Teaching; the University of Wisconsin Romnes Fellowship; the Hilldale Award for Collaborative Research, UW-Madison; the Robert Frost Chair at the Bread Loaf School of English; the Isabel MacCaffrey Prize (awarded by the Spenser Society); the William Cline Devane Medal for Distinguished Teaching at Yale University; the Sarai Ribicoff Award for the Encouragement of Teaching in Yale College; and the Yale College-Sidonie Miskimin Clauss Prize for Teaching Excellence in the Humanities. She was also appointed to the Charles B. G. Murphy Chair while at Yale. As a graduate student, won a Mellon Fellowship, a Whiting Fellowship, a Danforth Fellowship, and a Marshall Scholarship. Currently a member of the Modern Language Association's Executive Committee for the Division on Comparative Studies in Renaissance and Baroque Literature, excluding Shakespeare, she has served as the President of the Shakespeare Association of America and serves or has served on the boards of the International Spenser Society, American Comparative Literature Association, and the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes. She is a cofounder and current member of the steering committee of the Theater Without Borders International Collaborative. Her research interests include Shakespeare, Spenser, Renaissance and classical epic, comparative European drama and narrative and literary theory. Her publications include The Choice of Achilles: The Ideology of Figure in the Epic (Stanford University Press, 1992); Epic Traditions in the Contemporary World: The Politics of Community (coeditor) (University of California Press, 1999); Shakespeare: The Late Tragedies (Prentice-Hall, 1995); and Hamlet: Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism (St. Martin's Press, 1994). Her current projects include two book projects on Shakespeare and transnational Renaissance drama: The Apparent Corpse: Popular and Transnational Bodies on the Shakespearean Stage and Shakespeare and the Foreign: Intercultural Literacy and Literary Diaspora in Early Modern Europe.

Edited Volumes

2023

Cross-Dressing Technologies of Mobility, Trauma, and Freedom

Susanne Wofford co-edited Cross-Dressing Technologies of Mobility, Trauma, and Freedom, published by Renaissance Drama 50:2.

1999

Epic Traditions in the Contemporary World: The Politics of Community

Susanne Wofford, co-edited volume, Epic Traditions in the Contemporary World: The Politics of Community, was published by University of California Press.

Awards & Honors

2022

Dean Susanne L. Wofford Awarded Colin Clout Medal for Lifetime Achievement by the International Spenser Society

In May 2022, Dean Susanne L. Wofford was awarded the Colin Clout Medal for Lifetime Achievement by the International Spenser Society, the most prestigious award given by the Society, which is presented at variable intervals to a senior scholar whose body of work represents a wide-ranging, long-standing, and distinguished contribution to the study of Spenser.

Books

1992

The Choice of Achilles: The Ideology of Figure in the Epic

Susanne L. Wofford's The Choice of Achilles: The Ideology of Figure in the Epic was published by Stanford University Press.

Teaching and Research Interests

Shakespeare; comparative early modern European drama  including Spanish and Italian; Classical and Renaissance epic; early fiction from the ancient novel to Cervantes; narrative theory; theory of allegory; use of performance for interpretation; comparative studies of literature and art history 

Susanne Wofford