Degrees: PHD, 1992, Univ Chicago; MA, 1987, Univ Chicago; AB, 1986, Lafayette Coll

Bio:

Craig Rustici, Professor, Department of English (Ph.D., University of Chicago) teaches courses on early modern literature, Shakespeare, and the European and British literary traditions with particular attention to various forms of otherness (gendered, racial, sexual). He has taught in the First-Year Connections program, Honors College, and the English Department’s graduate program.

His research interests include gender, colonialism, and material culture in early modern England. His book The Afterlife of Pope Joan (University of Michigan Press, 2006) examines the legends concerning an apocryphal ninth-century woman who reportedly cross-dressed her way to the papacy only to have her imposture exposed when she gave birth during a solemn procession. This study investigates, in particular, the vexed attempts to appropriate those legends within sixteenth- and seventeenth- century political and religious controversies. His presentation "Glass Houses: Why the Subjects of Queen Elizabeth Avoided the Subject of Pope Joan" was chosen as Hofstra's Fall 2001 Distinguished Faculty Lecture and included on the 2003-2005 program for New York State Speakers in the Humanities. He is currently researching the place in English literature and culture of tobacco, a commodity that early modern writers portrayed variously as panacea and poison, means to empire and “Indian tyrant.”