The Art and Power of Conversation
English Renaissance Literature and Culture
Shakespearean Drama
Literature and Science
Literary Theory
Aaron W. Kitch
Associate Professor of English, on leave for the 2024–2025 academic year
My classes focus on early modern literature, with a special interest in Shakespeare, though I also teach courses on Renaissance, poetry, theories of embodiment, literary and cultural theory, and the art and power of conversation. My research focuses on the twin influences of early modern science and religion as they shaped and increasingly depended on modes of representation. My book on Shakespeare’s Theater of Nature: Science, Religion, and the Orders of Mimesis in Early Modern Europe is forthcoming from Palgrave Macmillan and an anthology of essays coedited with Jennifer Rust (St. Louis University) entitled Rethinking Science and Religion in Early Modern England is forthcoming from Arden Bloomsbury. A new project addresses the emergence of new racial categories in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, focusing on the application of "race" as a category to animals in works of zoology, natural history, and venery (i.e., hunting manuals). I am on research leave for the 2024-25 academic year.
The Secret History of Magnets: Finding The Humanities in the History of Science
Education
- PhD, University of Chicago
- MA, University of Colorado-Boulder
- BA, Yale University