Roland Greene

Professor of English and Comparative Literature
Mark Pigott KBE Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences
Anthony P. Meier Family Professor in the Humanities
Director of the Stanford Humanities Center
1985: Ph.D., Princeton University
1979: A.B., Brown University
Roland Greene is a scholar of Renaissance culture, especially the literatures of England, Latin Europe, and the transatlantic world, and of poetry and poetics from the sixteenth century to the present. His most recent book is Five Words: Critical Semantics in the Age of Shakespeare and Cervantes (2013). He is the editor in chief of the fourth edition of the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (2012).
 
His other books include Unrequited Conquests: Love and Empire in the Colonial Americas (1999), which argues that the love poetry of the Renaissance had a formative role in European ideas about the Americas during the first phase of the colonial period; Post-Petrarchism: Origins and Innovations of the Western Lyric Sequence (1991), a transhistorical study of lyric poetics; and, edited with Elizabeth Fowler, The Project of Prose in Early Modern Europe and the New World (1997).
 
The directions of Greene's research are reflected in the two working groups he oversees with colleagues and graduate students, both formally recognized as Focal Groups in the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages. In 2004 he established Renaissances: A Research Group in Early Modern Literatures, which presents younger scholars from around the U.S. and elsewhere in conversation with Stanford Ph.D. students about work in progress. In 2006 he created the Stanford Poetics Workshop, which includes a regular membership of faculty members, advanced graduate students, and fellows at the Humanities Center. These groups invite both Stanford scholars and visitors to present research in progress, and serve to assemble the community of Ph.D. students currently working in these areas.
 
At Stanford he is actively involved with the Knight-Hennessy Scholars, where he is a Faculty Fellow; the Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in the Humanities, which brings postdoctoral scholars to campus; the Bing Overseas Studies Program; and the Program in Structured Liberal Education (SLE), of which he is a former director.
 
In 2015-16 Greene served as President of the Modern Language Association of America. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Future Lectures:

"Shakespeare's First Folio as Cultural Engine," Humanities West, San Francisco, January 19, 2024

Recent Lectures and Conference Papers:

"William Shakespeare's First Folio in Its World," School of Advanced Study, University of London, November 2023

"An Eclogue in His Head: Sidney's Inception of the Baroque," Jan Van Dorsten Lecture, International Sidney Society, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, May 2023

"The Humanities and Democracy in a Time of Danger," Balvant Parekh Memorial Lecture, Forum on Contemporary Theory, Baroda, December 2022

"The End of Utopia in Digital Humanities," Keynote Lecture, Intersections: International Conference on Digital Humanities, School of Liberal Studies, UPES, Dehradun, December 2022   
    
"Literary Studies Between Universalism and Apocalypse," Keynote Lecture, 25th Annual Conference of the Forum on Contemporary Theory, Guwahati, December 2022   
    
"Choice and Power in Poetics: Juan Caramuel's Metametrica (1663)," Philip Hallie Lecture, College of Letters, Wesleyan University, October 2022

"Critical Semantics Continued: How Juan Caramuel Makes and Unmakes Meaning," Shakespeare Center and Early Cultures Group, University of California, Irvine, May 2022   
    
"A Strange, Multilingual Book About Poetry and the Limits of Critical Semantics," Romance Languages and Literatures Program, University of California, Berkeley, April 2022   
    
"The Worlds of Transatlantic Poetry," Plenary Lecture, Society for Renaissance and Baroque Hispanic Poetry, 15th Biennial Conference, University of Cambridge, March 2022   
    
"From Renaissance to Baroque: A Conceptual Aesthetic in the Seventeenth Century," Gollancz Lecture, Centre for Early Modern Studies, King's College London, May 2019   
    
"Baroque Inceptions: Thinking About Seventeenth-Century Literature and Art in the Twenty-First Century," Society of Fellows in the Humanities, University of Southern California, April 2019   
    
"Early Modern Prose Fiction: How to Think About It Without Anticipating the Novel," Keynote Lecture, Modern Humanities Research Association, Belfast, November 2018   
    
"The Hemispheric Poetics of Colonial Poetry," American Poetics and the Making of a New World, Renaissance Society of America, New Orleans, March 2018   
    
"What Is Critical Semantics? A Genealogy and a Manifesto," Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago, January 2018   
    
Respondent, "Critical Semantics: New Transcultural Keywords," Modern Language Association Convention, New York, January 2018   
    
"Inceptions of the Baroque: Pascal’s Pensées and Milton’s Paradise Lost," Forum on Contemporary Theory, English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, July 2017   
    
"Metametrica: Juan Caramuel's Baroque Poetics," Poetics before Modernity, University of Cambridge, May 2017   
    
Roundtable, "Academics as Writers," Renaissance Society of America, Chicago, March 2017   
    
"Apollo Barroco: What Was a Poem in the Seventeenth Century?," What Is a Poem?, Center for Poetry and Poetics, University of Virginia, March 2017   
    
"The Renaissance and Baroque Worlds of Miguel de Cervantes," Litquake, San Francisco, October 2016   
    
"The Concept of Baroque in Literature—and the World," Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Ohio State University, September 2016   
    
"Shakespeare + Cervantes + 1616," Plenary Lecture, Sociedad Hispano-Portuguesa de Estudios Renacentistas Ingleses (SEDERI), Valladolid, May 2016   
    
"Who Was Shakespeare's Cervantes? Who Was Cervantes' Shakespeare?," Plenary Lecture, Cervantes and Shakespeare 400th Anniversary Conference, Catholic Institute of Paris and University of Poitiers, Paris, April 2016   
    
"1616: Three Deaths and Why They Mattered," Symposium on 1616, Rhodes College, April 2016   
    
"Four Hundred Years Ago Today: What Ended? What Began?," North Dakota State University, Fargo, April 2016   
    
Roundtable, Toward a Literary History of Medieval and Renaissance Europe, Renaissance Society of America, Boston, April 2016   
    
President's Panel, Comparative Poetics and the Question of World Poetry, American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting, Harvard University, March 2016   
    
“How We Share Ideas Now: Colloquies, A New Platform," Keynote Lecture, Council of Independent Colleges Workshop on Information Fluency in English and American Language and Literature, Louisville, March 2016   
    
"The Renaissance World of Cervantes and Shakespeare" and "The Baroque World of Cervantes and Shakespeare," Keynote Lectures, Humanities West, San Francisco, February 2016   
    
"Who Was Shakespeare's Cervantes?," Shakespeare Across the Divide, Betsy Hotel, Miami, February 2016   
    
"Shakespeare's Latinidad: Or, Why Read a Renaissance Playwright in 21st-Century Miami?," Honors College, Florida International University, February 2016   
    
"Spenser's Unwritten Poetics," Hugh MacLean Memorial Lecture, International Spenser Society, Modern Language Association (MLA) Convention, Austin, January 2016   
    
"Literature and Its Publics: Past, Present, and Future," Presidential Address, MLA Convention, Austin, January 2016   
 

Ph.D. Students, as Director or Co-Director:

Jonathan Atkins, "To Continue to End: Verse and the Performance of the Limit," Department of English, in progress   

Mattea Koon, "The Sense and the Sensible," Department of English, in progress   
    
Joseph Kidney, "Funeral Processions: Early Modern English Drama in the Age of Reformations," Department of English, in progress   
    
María Gloria Robalino, "Heightened Worlds: Vertiginous Imaginaries in the Pacific Ring of Fire, 1550-1690," Department of Comparative Literature, in progress   
    
Chloé Brault MacKinnon, "Reading Blackness at Its Limits in Francophone Literature," Department of Comparative Literature, in progress    
    
Lorenzo Bartolucci, "The Neurological Imagination: Neuroscience and the Self in Twentieth-Century Poetry," Department of Comparative Literature, in progress   
    
Michael Menna, "Policies in Making: The Radical Self-Regulation of Tudor-Stuart Theater," Department of English, in progress   
    
Armen Davoudian, "Metanoia: How Poets Change Their Minds," Department of English, in progress   
    
Radhika Koul, "The Drama of Our World: Spectator and Subject in Early Modern Europe and Medieval Kashmir," Department of Comparative Literature, 2023. Now Assistant Professor of Literature, Claremont McKenna College.

Leonardo Velloso-Lyons, "Inventing the Hinterlands: Africa in the Sixteenth-Century Iberian Imaginary," Department of Comparative Literature, 2022. Recipient of the department's Rubidge Prize for best dissertation, 2023. Now Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Cornell University, and Assistant Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, Emory University.   
    
Hannah Smith-Drelich, "Altered Appetites: Food and Metaphor in Early Modern England," Department of English, 2022. Now Lecturer in NUS College, National University of Singapore.   
    
Nicholas Fenech, "Atoms of Change: Translingual Intersections and Cultural Transformation, 1587-1633," Department of Comparative Literature, 2021. Now Consultant, Bain and Company.   
    
Shoshana Olidort, "Performing Intersectional Identities: Five Jewish Women Poets in the Twentieth Century," Department of Comparative Literature, 2021. Recipient of the department's Rubidge Prize for best dissertation, 2023. Now Web Editor, The Poetry Foundation.   
    
Juan Lamata, "Masterless Renaissance: Rogue Form from Lazarillo to Cutpurse," Department of English, 2020. Now Assistant Professor of English, California State University, Los Angeles.   
    
Melih Levi, "The Plain Sense of Things: An Analysis of Mid-Twentieth-Century Departures from Modernism," Department of Comparative Literature, 2020. Now Assistant Professor of English, Boğaziçi University.   
    
Luis Rodríguez-Rincón, "Pagan Nature: Grottos, Nymphs, and Tritons as Fabula in Early Modern Poetry (1492-1616)," Department of Comparative Literature, 2020. Now Assistant Professor of Spanish, Haverford College.   
    
Daeyeong (Dan) Kim, "Migrant Identities: Renegades and Cosmopolitans in English Renaissance Drama," Department of English, 2019. Now Lecturer in English, Stanford University.   
    
Jesse Nathan, "Poets' Poets: Rethinking Influence in Victorian and Modernist Poetry," Department of English, 2019. Now Lecturer in English, University of California, Berkeley.   
    
Cécile Tresfels, "The Fear Within: The Apprehensive Self in Sixteenth-Century French Literature," Department of French and Italian, 2019. Formerly Assistant Professor of French, Williams College.   
    
Luke Barnhart, "Plain Poetics: Alternative History for an Early Modern Style," Department of English, 2018. Now Lecturer in English, Sonoma State University.    
    
Jessica Beckman, "The Mind's Eye: Vision, Text, and Thought in Early Modern English Print," Department of English, 2018. Now Assistant Professor of English, Dartmouth College.   
    
Justin Tackett, "Listening Between the Lines: Sound Technology and Affect in Poetry, 1850-1930," Department of English, 2018. Recipient of the department's Alden Prize for best dissertation, 2019. Now Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, University of Warwick.   
    
Caroline Egan, "Imagined Voices: Amerindian Orality and New World Poetry," Department of Comparative Literature, 2016. Now Assistant Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, Northwestern University.   
    
Lucy Alford, "Unfolding Presence: Poetic Attention through the Lens of the Twentieth Century," Department of Comparative Literature, 2016. Now Assistant Professor of English, Wake Forest University.   
    
Virginia Ramos, "Enacted Perception: The Modern Lyrical Novel," Department of Comparative Literature, 2016. Now Lecturer, University of San Francisco.   
    
Ryan Haas, "Sound and Vision: Sonic Experience in Wordsworth, Blake, and Clare," Department of English, 2016. Now Planner for Real Estate and Strategic Projects, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis.   
    
Derek Mong, "The Marriage of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson," Department of English, 2015. Now Associate Professor of English, Wabash College.   
    
Rhiannon Lewis, "Writing in Time: Labor and Work in English Poetry, 1557-1640," Department of English, 2015. Now Development Officer, SPCA of Hancock County, Maine; formerly Institutional Gifts Manager, San Francisco Conservatory of Music.   
    
Talya Meyers, "Epic and Encounter: Form and Culture in Early Modern Narrative Poetry," Department of English, 2015. Recipient of the department's Alden Prize for best dissertation, 2016. Now Senior Editor, Direct Relief.   
    
Noam Pines, "The Poetics of Dehumanization in Jewish Literature," Department of Comparative Literature, 2014. Now Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Jewish Thought, University at Buffalo, State University of New York.   
    
Bronwen Tate, "Putting it All In, Leaving it All Out: Expansion and Compression in Post-War Poetry," Department of Comparative Literature, 2014. Now Assistant Professor of Creative Writing, University of British Columbia.   
    
Christopher Donaldson, "The Local Poet in the Romantic Tradition," Department of Comparative Literature, 2012. Now Lecturer in History, University of Lancaster.   
    
Kathryn Hume, "The Performance of Analysis in Seventeenth-Century Literature and Science," Department of Comparative Literature, 2012. Now Vice-President of Digital Investments Technology, RBC.   
    
Anton Vander Zee, "'The Final Lilt of Songs': Late Whitman and the Long American Century," Department of English, 2012. Now Associate Professor of English, College of Charleston.   
    
Frederick L. Blumberg, "Literature and Its Rivals, 1500-1660," Department of Comparative Literature, 2011. Formerly Assistant Professor of English, University of Hong Kong.   
    
Fabian Goppelsröder, "Kalendergeschichte and fait divers: The Poetics of Circumscribed Space," Department of Comparative Literature, 2011. Now Fedor Lynen Fellow, Department of Germanic Studies, University of Chicago.   
    
Harris Feinsod, "Fluent Mundo: Inter-American Poetry, 1939-1973," Department of Comparative Literature, 2011. Now Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies, Northwestern University.   
    
Stephanie Schmidt, "Foundational Narratives, Performance and the City," Department of Iberian and Latin American Cultures, 2011. Now Assistant Professor of Spanish, University at Buffalo, State University of New York.   
    
David Marno, "Thanking as Thinking: The Poetics of Grace in John Donne's Holy Sonnets," Department of Comparative Literature, 2011. Now Associate Professor of English, University of California, Berkeley.   
    
Anne Marie Guglielmo, "Contested Genealogies in Early Modern Mediterranean Literature," Department of Comparative Literature, 2010   
    
Ema Vyroubalová, "Linguistic Alterity and Foreignness in Early Modern England, 1534-1625," Department of English, 2010. Recipient of the department's Alden Prize for best dissertation, 2011. Now Assistant Professor of Early Modern English Literature, Trinity College, Dublin.   
    
Claire Seiler, “Between Pole and Tropic: Poetry and Fiction, 1945-1955," Department of English, 2010. Now Associate Professor of English, Dickinson College.   
    
Enrique Lima, "Forms of Conquest: Indian Conflict and the Novel in the Americas," Department of Comparative Literature, 2006. Now Visiting Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies, University of California, Berkeley.   
    
David Colón, "Embodying the Ideogram: Orientalism and the Visual Aesthetic in Modernist Poetry," Department of English, 2004. Now Associate Professor of English, Texas Christian University.   
    
Jillanne Michell, "The Ethics of Toleration in English Renaissance Literature," Department of English, University of Oregon, 2004. Now Professor of English and Department Chair, Umpqua Community College.   
    
Carolyn Bergquist, "Worlds of Persuasion," Department of English, University of Oregon, 2003. Now Senior Lecturer and Director of Composition, University of Oregon.   
    
Kate Jenckes, "Allegories of Writing / History: Borges, Benjamin, and Buenos Aires," Program in Comparative Literature, University of Oregon, 2001. Now Professor of Spanish, University of Michigan.   
    
Miles Taylor, "Nation, History, and Theater: Representing the Past in the Drama of Early Modern England," Department of English, University of Oregon, 2000. Now Associate Professor of English, Le Moyne College.   
    
Nina Chordas, "Utopian Poetics: The Praxis and Discourse of Utopia in England and America, 1516-1637," Department of English, University of Oregon, 1998. Now Associate Professor of English Emerita, University of Alaska Southeast.   
    
Jaspal Singh, "Maddening Inscriptions: 'Madness' as Resistance in Postcolonial African and South Asian Women's Fiction and Film," Program in Comparative Literature, University of Oregon, 1998. Now Professor of English, Northern Michigan University.   
    
Karen Piper, "Territories of the Novel: Borders, Identities, and Displacements in Twentieth-Century Fiction," Program in Comparative Literature, University of Oregon, 1996. Now Professor of English, University of Missouri, Columbia.   
    
Marilyn G. Miller, "Miscegenation and the Narrative Voice," Program in Comparative Literature, University of Oregon, 1995. Now Professor of Spanish and Sizeler Family Professor in Judaic Studies, Tulane University.

 

Contact

Telephone
(650) 725-1214
Office
Pigott Hall, Bldg 260, Rm 215

Office Hours

By appointment

Research Interests

  • Digital Humanities

     

  • Literary and Cultural Theory

     

  • Literary Criticism (history of criticism, theory of literature)

     

  • Modernism

     

  • Poetry and Poetics

     

  • Renaissance

     

  • Transatlantic Studies