Karen Nelson

Karen Nelson is Director for Research Initiatives in the Center for Literary & Comparative Studies. She also oversees departmental communications and alumni relations. Nelson serves as Editor for the Sixteenth Century Journal.

Recent courses include: 

• [current semester] English 460: Archival Research Methods in Literary Studies, Spring 2025, Fall 2021, Spring 2021, Fall 2020, Spring 2020  
• English 304: Major Works of Shakespeare, Fall 2015 
• English 305: Early Drama, Fall 2019 
• English 308E: Multimedia Shakespeare, Fall 2023 [previously English 379N, online, Summer 2019 and Summer 2018]
• English 350 (at UMBC) Monsters, Knights, and Lovers: the Poetics of Edmund Spenser, Spring 2013
• English 351 (at UMBC): Shakespeare Uncharted, Spring 2022 
• English 377: Medieval Myth & Modern Narrative, Spring 2012
• English 403: Shakespeare, The Early Works, Spring 2024, Spring 2018, and Fall 2016 
• English 404: Shakespeare: The Later Works, Fall 2017
• English 408C: Literature by Women before 1800: Geographies & Worlds, 1400-1700, Fall 2011 
• English 493: Writing Genres as Social Action, Fall 2024
• NEH Summer Seminar: Re-Mapping the Renaissance: Exchange between Early Modern Islam & Europe, Summer 2010.

Presentations for 2023-2024 include a paper for the Sixteenth Century Society, October 2023.

Recent Awards: Nelson received a lifetime achievement award from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women, October 2014, and a service to the department award, September 2014, from the College of Arts and Humanities.

Publications include Feminist Circulations: Rhetorical Explorations across Space & Time (Parlour Press, 2021; co-edited with Jessica Enoch and Danielle Griffin); Re-Mapping the Renaissance: Exchange between Early Modern Islam and Europe: Proceedings of the 2010 NEH Summer Institute (online, multimedia, active 2012-2016, with Adele Seeff, Julia Schleck, E. Nathalie Rothman and others, as part of SERAI: Pre-Modern Encounters, at University of Toronto Scarborough);  Attending to Early Modern Women: Conflict, Concord (University of Delaware Press, 2013); Masculinities, Violence, Childhood: Attending to Early Modern Women--and Men: Proceedings of the 2006 Symposium, edited with Amy E. Leonard (New Jersey: Associated University Presses, 2011); Women, Writing, and the Reproduction of Culture in Tudor and Stuart Britain, edited with Jane Donawerth, Mary Burke, and Linda Dove (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000); various articles, bibliographies, reviews, and biographical entries. Nelson served as book review editor for Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal from its inception in 2006 through its 2010 move to the University of Miami.

Nelson served as associate director for the Center for Renaissance & Baroque Studies at the University of Maryland from 1999 through 2010. During that time, the Center organized a variety of interdisciplinary programs and publications for scholars, teachers, and students, including the Attending to Early Modern Women symposium series. Nelson was part of the grant-writing teams that secured funding from such agencies as the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Maryland Humanities Council, the Maryland State Department of Education, the Delmas Foundation, and the Kress Foundation.

Foldable Banneker Almanac, generated for ENGL 460, spring 2020.

Education:

Ph.D., University of Maryland, College Park, May 1998. Major: English Literature. Specialties: Renaissance; Women's Writing
M.A., University of Maryland, College Park, 1992. Major: English Literature
A.B., College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, 1987. Major: English Literature. Minor: German