The seventeenth century, or late Renaissance, has always struck me as a period of extraordinary intellectual richness. It is the beginning of modern philosophy, modern science, and modern two-party government, and it provides the background for some of the most powerful verse written in English. My research focuses on a few poets of the time--Herbert, Milton, Marvell, and Vaughan. I am particularly interested in literary representations of nature and how people adjusted their views of spaces such as gardens and the countryside as the scientific revolution progressed. In the classes I teach I often incorporate materials that involve problems about nature, as well as issues in religion, aesthetic theory, and pedagogy.

Selected Publications

"Bioaesthetics and the American West," forthcoming 2013 in Found in Alberta: Environmental Themes for the Anthropocene, ed. Robert Boschman and Mario Trono (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press).

"Fairfax, Marvell, and the Mowers of Nun Appleton," 2013, Ben Jonson Journal.

"Herbert's Pastor as Herbalist," 2010, George Herbert's Pastoral: New Essays on the Poet and Priest of Bemerton, ed. Christopher Hodgkins (Newark: University of Delaware Press).

"Baptisms and Burials: The Presence of the Prayer Book in Herbert's Nature Poetry," 2006, George Herbert Journal.

"German Translations of Paradise Lost," 2006, Yale Milton Encyclopedia.

"Seventeenth-Century Teeth," 2003, Rendezvous.

"Andrew Marvell's Garden-Variety Debates," 2001, Huntington Library Quarterly.

"Andrew Marvell, Man Without Qualities," 2011, Essay Review, Huntington Library Quarterly.

Teaching Emphases

• Seventeenth-Century (Renaissance) Literature
• Studies in Poetry
• Science and Religion in Literature
• Literature and the Environment
• Milton
• Classical (Greek and Roman) Literature
• Pedagogy

Office: LA 258-C
Office Phone: 282-2742
whitaker@isu.edu