CURRICULUM VITAE
Maria Teresa Micaela Prendergast
Associate Professor Emerita
Department of English, Kauke Hall
The College of Wooster
Wooster, OH 44691
330-317-6588
EDUCATION:
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Ph.D., University of Virginia, 1990
M.A., University of Virginia, 1983
Certificat d’Aptitude à l’Enseignement de Français, Institut Catholique de Paris, 1979
B.A., Yale University, 1977
ACADEMIC POSITIONS:
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College of Wooster: Associate Professor, 2010-2018
Chair of the English Department, 2014-2016
College of Wooster: Assistant Professor, 2008-2010
College of Wooster: Visiting Assistant Professor, 2007-2008
Grinnell College: Assistant Professor, 2005 -2008
College of Wooster: Visiting Assistant Professor, 1999-2002, 2003-2005
Director, The Writing Center, 2003-2005
University of South Alabama: Assistant Professor, 1995-1998
University of Miami: Assistant Professor, 1990-1995
University of Virginia: Teaching Assistant, 1984-1987
PUBLICATIONS AND CURRENT BOOK-LENGTH PROJECT:
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Published Books:
Railing, Reviling, and Invective in Early Modern Literary Culture, 1588-1617: The Anti-Poetics of Theater and Print. Aldershot, England: Ashgate Press, 2012.
Renaissance Fantasies: The Gendering of Aesthetics in Early Modern Fiction.
Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2000.
Book-Length Project:
“Blood, Devotion, and Anger: Catherine of Aragon’s Epistolary Voice, 1485-1536″
Refereed Articles:
“Who Wrote Catherine of Aragon’s Last Letter?” In Shakespeare and Early Modern Misogyny.” Bloomsbury, Forthcoming.
“Black Stitch, Dark Skin, and English Ale: Catherine of Aragon as the First Foreign Tudor Princess.” In Nationalism and Royal Women in Early Modern England: The Queen’s Gambit. Palgrave Macmillan: 2025. 15-32.
“’Inventions Invented Against Me’: The Five Catherines of Aragon at the Blackfriars’s Trial.” Renaissance Quarterly 77 (2024): 529-72.
“For the Debt of Blood: Form, Rhetoric, and Performance in Catherine of Aragon’s Letters to Ferdinand of Aragon and Charles V, 1502-1536.” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 20.3 (2020): 85-120.
“Catherine of Aragon’s Letters, English Popular Memory, and Male Authorial Fantasies,” Studies in Philology 118 (2021): 207-241.
With Thomas Prendergast, “The Invention of Propaganda: A Translation and Critical Commentary of the 1622 Papal Bull, Inscrutabili Divinae.” The Oxford Handbook of Propaganda, ed. Jonathan Auerbach and Russ Castronovo. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
“The Aesthetics of Railing: Troilus and Cressida and Coriolanus,” Renaissance and Reformation 31.3 (2008): 69-102.
“Sodomy and Boccaccio’s Heteroerotic Aesthetics,” Explorations in Renaissance Culture 34.1 (2008): 71-90. [Note: although I have been a reader for this journal, submissions for the journal are blind submissions.]
“Promiscuous Textualities: The Nashe-Harvey Controversy and the Unnatural Productions of Print.” Parenting and Printing in Early Modern England. Ed. Douglas Brooks. Ashgate, 2005.
“’Unmanly Melancholy’: Lack, Fetishism, and Abuse in Timon of Athens.”
Criticism 42 (2000): 207-228.
“Philoclea Parsed: Prose, Poetry and Femininity in Sidney’s Old Arcadia.”
Framing Elizabethan Fictions: Contemporary Approaches to Early Modern Prose Narrative. Ed. Constance C. Relihan. Kent: Kent State University Press, 1997.
“Engendering Pericles.” Literature and Psychology 42 (1996): 53-75.
“The Unauthorized Orpheus of Astrophil and Stella.” Studies in English Literature 35.1
(1995): 19-34.
DISSERTATION:
“Ruptured Closure: Sir Philip Sidney and the Poetics of Contradiction.”
BOOK REVIEWS:
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Manuela Scarci, ed. and intro. Creating Women: Representation, Self-Representation and Agency in the Renaissance. Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 10. 1 (2015): 185-88.
Jesse Lander, Inventing Polemic: Religion, Print, and Literary Culture in Early Modern England. Renaissance Quarterly 61.2 (2008): 663-64.
Richard Halpern, Shakespeare’s Perfume: Sodomy and Sublimity in the Sonnets, Wilde,
Freud, and Lacan. Sixteenth-Century Studies. 35.1 (2003): 306.
Katharine Maus, Inwardness and the Theater in the English Renaissance.
Comparative Drama 30.3 (1996): 426-428.
ORGANIZER/CHAIR OF CONFERENCE PANELS AND WORKSHOPS:
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Organizer (with Sarah Moran), 2-Session Panel on “Interrogating Sovereignty: Catholicism and Female Agency Across Europe.” Renaissance Society of America. San Francisco, California. February, 2026.
Organizer, Panel on “Early Modern Women Writers and the Shaping of a Newer Formalism.”
The Renaissance Society of America. San Juan, Puerto Rico. March, 2023.
Organizer (with Sarah Moran and Alexandra Verini), Panel on “Media, Materiality, and Early Modern Catholic Women.” The Renaissance Society of America. Dublin, Ireland. March, 2022.
Organizer, Panel on “Foreign Queens Consort: Borders, Movement, Agency,” Renaissance Society of America Conference. Online. March, 2021.
Organizer, Panel on “Aristocracy, Agency, and Authorship: The Letters of Catherine of Aragon, Mary Sidney, and Henrietta Maria,” Renaissance Society of America Conference. Toronto, CA, March, 2019.
Organizer, Panel on “Agency and Performance: Queens Consort in Early Modern History and Literature” (co-proposed with Susan Dunn-Henley, Wheaton College, and Jessica Devos, Yale University), Attending to Early Modern Women Conference. Milwaukee, WI, June, 2018.
Chair, Panel on “Rethinking the Shakespearean Body,” Renaissance Society of America. Los Angeles, CA. April, 2018.
Organizer, Chair, and Panelist, “Are We Not Men? Gesture, Appetite and the Definition of Man, 1598-1854.” Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies. Philadelphia, PA, November, 2008.
Organizer, Chair, and Panelist, “Perspectives on Shakespeare.” Renaissance Society of America. Philadelphia, PA, December, 2006.
Organizer, Chair, and Panelist, “Gossip, Abuse, and the Novelties of Print.” Sixteenth-Century
Studies Conference. San Antonio, TX, March, 2002.
SELECTED PAPERS PRESENTED:
“The Good Queen and the Imperialist: How Catherine of Aragon Became the First English-Spanish Hapsburg.” Renaissance Society of America. San Francisco. February, 2026.
“Last Words and the Contingency of Conversion in Shakespeare and Fletcher’s King Henry VIII. Seminar on “Drama and Conversion.” Shakespeare Association of America. Boston. March, 2025.
“Convention, Trauma, and the Changing Hands and Voices of Catherine of Aragon, 1488-1507.” Renaissance Society of America Conference. Chicago. March, 2024.
“Who Wrote Catherine of Aragon’s Last Letter?” Seminar on Shakespeare and Early Modern Misogyny. Shakespeare Association of America. Minneapolis. March, 2023.
“Martyrdom, Deathbed Writings, and Catherine of Aragon’s Posthumous Reputation: A New Formalist Reading of Spurious and Authentic Letters.” Renaissance Society of America. San Juan, Puerto Rico. March, 2023.
Catherine of Aragon and Early Modern Conceptualizations of Maternity.” Seminar on “Mothering in Early Modern Culture.” Shakespeare Association of America. Jacksonville, FL. April 2022.
“King, Confessor, and Princess: Contesting Catherine of Aragon’s Soul and Dowry in her 1507 Letters.” Renaissance Society of America. Dublin, Ireland. March, 2022.
“Movement, Gesture, and the Shaping of Catherine of Aragon’s Reputation.” Renaissance Society of America Conference. Online. March 2020.
“Who Wrote Catherine of Aragon’s Last Letter?” Renaissance Society of America Conference. Toronto. March, 2019.
“Chronicle, Drama, and the Competing Voices of Catherine of Aragon,” Sixteenth Century Studies Conference. Albuquerque. November, 2018.
“History, Divorce, and the Disruption of Romance in Shakespeare’s Henry VIII (All is True).”Seminar on “Revisiting Genre Theory.” Shakespeare Association of America. Los Angeles. March, 2018.
“Performing Catherine of Aragon, 1525-1533.” Seminar on “Early Modern Drama Beyond Performance.” Shakespeare Association of America. Atlanta. April 2017.
“Creating Catherines: Catherine of Aragon versus Shakespeare (and Fletcher’s) Katherine. Seminar on “Absence and Omission in Shakespeare.” Shakespeare Association of America. New Orleans. March, 2016.
Katherine without Words: Shakespeare’s Katherine and the Historical Catherine of Aragon.” Shakespeare Association of America. Seminar on “Shakespeare without Words.” St. Louis. April, 2014.
“Creating Catherine of Aragon in England, Spain, and Italy, 1520-1540.” Sixteenth-Century Studies Conference. San Juan, Puerto Rico. October, 2013.
“Catherine of Aragon’s Virginity: Nostalgia for an Imagined Prelapsarian England in Shakespeare’s Henry VIII.” Renaissance Society of America. San Diego, CA. April, 2013.
“Katherine and Catholicism: Nostalgic Inscriptions of Morality Play and Dream Vision in Shakespeare’s Henry VIII. Seminar on “Race/Religion and Gender: Medieval Continuities in Early Modern English Drama.” Shakespeare Association of America. Toronto. March, 2013.
“Representing the Unrepresentable: Catherine of Aragon’s Virginity, the Divorce Trial, and Shakespeare’s Henry VIII.” Ohio Shakespeare Conference. Marietta, Ohio. October 2012.
“From Poughkeepsie to Paris: The Humanities, Vassar College, and the Re-Emergence of American Tourism in Europe, 1949.” Mid-Atlantic Popular Culture Association. Pittsburgh, PA, November, 2012.
“Stephen Greenblatt’s ‘Fiction and Friction’: A Queer Text?” Shakespeare Association of America Annual Conference. Bellevue, WA, April 2011.
“Men are Such Dogges: Animal Appetites and the Appetite for Print, 1588-1617.” Faculty Research Talk. The College of Wooster. September, 2010.
“’Stewes,’ ‘Pewes,’ and the Erotic Productions of Print.” Shakespeare Association of America Annual Conference. Seminar on “The Marprelate Effect.” Washington, D.C. April, 2009.
“Ephemeral Intimacies: Elizabethan Productions of Railing.” Seminar on “Innovation and
Technology.” Shakespeare Association of America. Dallas, TX. March, 2008.
“Railing and Queer Homosocial Affect: The Marprelate Pamphlets and Timon of Athens.”
Seminar on “Looking Sideways: Queer Perspectives on Heterosexuality.”
Shakespeare Association of America. Philadelphia, PA. April, 2006.
“Vitriolic Masculinities: The Anti-Poetics of the War of the Theaters.” Renaissance Society of America. New York, NY. March, 2004.
“Scanning Woman’s Anger: Early Modern Misandronic Poetry.” Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies. Newport Beach, CA. October, 2003.
“The Poetry and Politics of Slander.” Sixteenth-Century Studies Conference. San Antonio, TX. October, 2002.
“Aubrey’s Wives: The Aesthetics of Gossip in John Aubrey’s Brief Lives.” Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies. Philadelphia, PA. November, 2001.
“Print, Effeminacy, and the Renaissance Poetics of Abuse.” Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies. New Orleans, LA. November, 2000.
“Patriarchy, Sodomy, and the Heteroerotic Aesthetics of the Decameron.” Modern Language Association. Chicago, IL. December, 1999.
BLOGGING AND DIGITAL PROJECTS:
Blog posts for the Hales Fund (The College of Wooster), “Time and Space in London” at http://haleslondon.scotblogs.wooster.edu/
(my postings are under “mprendergast”)
Blog Posts on Tourism in Western Europe, 1949, at
http://www.fourtravelers1949.com/
Public Zotero Bibliography on Catherine of Aragon at:
(you will need to cut and paste this link onto your browser)
or search under the category “People” in Zotero for “Maria Teresa Prendergast”
Comparison of Catherine of Aragon Bibliographies; shareable link at:
(you will need to cut and paste this link onto your browser)
WORKSHOPS AND SEMINARS (Participant):
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“Editing Editing.” Shakespeare Association of America. Washington DC, April, 2019.
“The Handwriting and Culture of Early Modern English Manuscripts.” Rare Book School. The University of Virginia, October, 2017.
“London: Time and Space.” Hales Fund Research and Discussion Group, September 2016-April 2017; research trip to London, July-August, 2017.
“What are the Digital Humanities?” Midwest Faculty Seminar. The University of Chicago. November, 2013.
“Shakespeare and Performance. Shakespeare Association of America. Cleveland, Ohio,
April, 1998.
FUNDED RESEARCH:
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Renaissance Society of America Short Term Research Fellowship, 2023. $2,000.
Renaissance Society of America Short Term Research Fellowship, 2017-2018, $4,000.
Henry Luce III Fund for Distinguished Scholarship, 2016-2017 $7,386.
Henry Luce III Fund for Distinguished Scholarship, 2012-2013. $6,400.
Great Lakes College Association, New Directions Grant, 2011-2013. $7,800.
Summer Research Grant, Grinnell College, Summer, 2006.
Summer Research Fellowship, Folger Shakespeare Library, June and July, 2005.
Development Grant: Writing Intensive Course, The College of Wooster, Summer, 2002.
President’s Travel Grant, University of South Alabama, 1996.
Travel Research Grant, University of Miami, 1992, 1993.
Summer Orovitz Research Grant, University of Miami, 1991, 1992.
SERVICE:
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Renaissance Society of America Conference Program Committee, 2025.
Renaissance Society of America Fellowship Committee, 2020-2022.
LANGUAGES:
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Fluent: Spanish, French.
Good reading knowledge: Italian, German, Latin.
Reading knowledge: Middle Welsh.