About Me
I am the Hudson Strode Professor of English and Director of the Hudson Strode Program in Renaissance Studies at the University of Alabama. I received my B.A. summa cum laude from the University of Rochester in 1997 and my Ph.D. from Columbia University in 2003. I specialize in early modern literature, with concentrations in Tudor and Stuart drama, Shakespeare, and early modern women’s writing. My additional teaching and research interests include early modern theater culture, dramatic genres, feminist theory and gender studies, economic criticism, and early modern religious culture.
My first book, Women’s Work in Early Modern English Literature and Culture (Palgrave, 2009), won the Sara A. Whaley Book Award from the National Women’s Studies Association. My most recent book, The Dynamics of Inheritance on the Shakespearean Stage (Cambridge, 2015) offers a new understanding of how the theater, England’s most vibrant cultural institution in the Renaissance, shaped attitudes about primogeniture, one of the country’s most longstanding economic systems. Current projects include a monograph co-authored with Lara Dodds (tentatively titled Early Modern Women's Writing and the Future of Literary History) that aims to provide a synthesis and reassessment of the state of the field for early modern women's writing and a book-length study, tentatively titled Shakespeare’s Working Words, that analyzes how images of labor and working people fundamentally shape Shakespeare's plays-- often in surprising ways.
I have held fellowships from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Huntington Library, and the National Endowment for the Humanities (at the Newberry Library). From 2012-2014 I served as an elected member of the Executive Committee for the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women (SSEMW), and from 2016-2021 I served on the Executive Committee for the Modern Language Association (MLA) Forum on Shakespeare. In 2021, I was elected to a three-year term as a trustee of the Shakespeare Association of America (SAA).
I am also the editor of a new book series, Strode Studies in Early Modern Literature and Culture, published by the University of Alabama Press.
Before coming to Alabama, I taught at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and at Fordham University.
My first book, Women’s Work in Early Modern English Literature and Culture (Palgrave, 2009), won the Sara A. Whaley Book Award from the National Women’s Studies Association. My most recent book, The Dynamics of Inheritance on the Shakespearean Stage (Cambridge, 2015) offers a new understanding of how the theater, England’s most vibrant cultural institution in the Renaissance, shaped attitudes about primogeniture, one of the country’s most longstanding economic systems. Current projects include a monograph co-authored with Lara Dodds (tentatively titled Early Modern Women's Writing and the Future of Literary History) that aims to provide a synthesis and reassessment of the state of the field for early modern women's writing and a book-length study, tentatively titled Shakespeare’s Working Words, that analyzes how images of labor and working people fundamentally shape Shakespeare's plays-- often in surprising ways.
I have held fellowships from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Huntington Library, and the National Endowment for the Humanities (at the Newberry Library). From 2012-2014 I served as an elected member of the Executive Committee for the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women (SSEMW), and from 2016-2021 I served on the Executive Committee for the Modern Language Association (MLA) Forum on Shakespeare. In 2021, I was elected to a three-year term as a trustee of the Shakespeare Association of America (SAA).
I am also the editor of a new book series, Strode Studies in Early Modern Literature and Culture, published by the University of Alabama Press.
Before coming to Alabama, I taught at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and at Fordham University.
Contact Information
Office Location: 237 English Building
Address: Department of English University of Alabama Box 870244 Tuscaloosa, AL 35487 Email: mmdowd1@ua.edu Phone: (205) 348-6538 CV (PDF File) |