Karol Cooper

In my teaching and research, I trace how literatures of the past deepen our understanding of issues of current concern, particularly around matters of gender, race, and the role of language in expressions of power. I teach courses in British literature since 1600, comparative studies of British and American women writers and writers of color, modern African-American drama, and recent works by writers of color. I am presently working on a book-length study of slave and soul rhetoric in British literature of the early 1700s.

Publications

• “Dice, Jesting, and the ‘Pleasing Delusion’ of War-Like Love in Aphra Behn’s The Luckey Chance,” essay in Games and War in Early Modern English Literature, edited by Holly Faith Nelson and Jim Daems. Amsterdam University Press, 2019, pp. 139-160.
• “’The man is either mad, or I am in a dream’: Masculine Prerogative as Mental Disease in the Late Novels of Eliza Haywood,” essay in Symptoms of Disorder: Reading Madness in British Literature 1744-1845, edited by Ilaria Natali and Annalisa Volpone, Cambria Press, 2016, pp. 195-220.
• “Raping Justice in John Webster’s The White Devil,” essay in Woman on Trial: The Construction of Gender in Plays about Women Accused of Crime, edited by Amelia Howe Kritzer and Miriam López-Rodríguez, Teneo Press, 2015, pp.87-110.
• Ph.D., English, University of Washington B.A., English and Journalism, Indiana University “The Modernisation of the Medieval Staging of Soul in Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus.” Early Modern Literary Studies, Special Issue 23: Christopher Marlowe: Identities, Traditions, Afterlives, vol. 17, no. 2, 2014, Early Modern Literary Studies
• “ 'Too high for souls like mine to hide’:  Feminine Retreat and Exposure in Aphra Behn’s The Feign’d Curtizans.” Restoration and Eighteenth Century Theatre Research, vol. 23, no. 1, 2008, pp. 34-45.

Education

• Ph.D., English, University of Washington
• B.A., English and Journalism, Indiana University

Classes Taught

Spring 2024:

• ENG 204 (12:45-14:05)
• ENG 213 (9:35-10:55)
• ENG 365 (14:20-15:40)