Department of English

Ramie Targoff

Jehuda Reinharz Professor of the Humanities
Professor of English
Co-chair, Italian Studies
PhD, University of California, Berkeley
Meet Professor Targoff through OpenBook: An English Department Podcast.

Research Interests

Renaissance literature, lyric poetry, religion and literature; Shakespeare; Italian literature; and women's writing

Selected Publications

• "Poems of Widowhood: A Bilingual Edition of the 1538 'Rime'." Iter. (2021).

• "Renaissance Woman: The Life of Vittoria Colonna." Farrah, Straus and Giroux, 2018.

• "Posthumous Love: Eros and the Afterlife in Renaissance England." University of Chicago Press, 2014.

• ""Marriage and Sacrifice: The Poetics of the Epithalamia"." Spenser and Donne: Thinking Poets. n/a ed. vol. n/a Ed. Yulia Ryzhik. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2019. 171-182. Distinguished Publication Award for 2019 from the John Donne Society

• Thomas Browne's "Religio Medici and Urne-Burial." Co-editor, New York Review Books Classics, 2012.

• "John Donne, Body and Soul." Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.

• "Common Prayer: The Language of Public Devotion in Early Modern England." Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.

• Articles in PMLA, Representations, Renaissance Drama, Word, and Image, among others.

Awards

• Teaching Across the Disciplines: 2022-2023 Team Teaching Grant for "If Music and Sweet Poetry Agree: Expressive Verse and Music in Renaissance England and Italy," in partnership with Sarah Mead (MUS, Medieval and Renaissance Studies)

• Honorable Mention for 2015 James Russell Lowell Prize, Modern Language Association, 2015 for "Posthumous Love"

• Short-listed for 2015 Christian Gauss Award, Phi Betta Kappa, for "Posthumous Love"

• John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, 2012-13

• American Academy in Rome Scholar in Residence, Fall 2012

• American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, 2009-10

• Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin Fellowship, 2003-04

• Best Book of the Year from the Conference on Christianity and Literature for Common Prayer, 2001

Selected Courses Taught

• Shakespeare (ENG 33a)

• Witchcraft and Magic in Early Modern Europe (ENG 73a)

• Women’s Writing in the Renaissance (ENG 243b)