English prof receives coveted Lowell Prize

To his students, English Professor Peter Stallybrass is the most engaging scholar of Shakespeare at Penn. Among his colleagues, he is one of the best scholars in Renaissance literature.

And now he has the award to prove it.

The Modern Language Association has awarded the James Russell Lowell Prize for the most outstanding literary or linguistic study to Stallybrass for his book Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Modern Memory. Stallybrass co-authored the book with his wife, Ann Rosalind Jones, a Comparative Language professor at Smith College.

"It has been a particularly good experience," Stallybrass said. "I think especially considering that I wrote it with my spouse, which had made it even harder."

The Lowell Prize is considered to be a great honor because English and modern language professors must belong to the MLA, and some consider the award to be akin to the Nobel Prize for Literature.

English Department Chairman David Wallace said Stallybrass deserved the award.

"The Lowell Prize is considered especially prestigious," Wallace noted. "They have written a brilliant, multidisciplinary and thoroughly original book that is a pleasure to read."

Currently, Stallybrass has a year-long fellowship in advanced Judaic Studies and is only teaching part time. He runs a weekly seminar called "The History of Material Texts" and a graduate class, "Reading, Printing and Writing in Early Modern England." Last year, he received a Lindback Award for excellence in teaching from the University and co-authored a book with Allon White, entitled The Politics of Poetics and Transgression.

Stallybrass, who has also taught at the University of Sussex as well as Smith and Dartmouth colleges, said he has a great respect for Penn's English Department.

"I love doing English, and I think that the area of study I teach in, as well as the entire English Department, is particularly strong at Penn," Stallybrass said.

For students, it is his work both inside and outside of the classroom that they admire.

"Professor Stallybrass is an outstanding scholar in his field, and I think it's wonderful that his work has been so recognized," College senior Clarette Kim said. "If he writes books as insightfully as he teaches, then this award is rightfully his."

College senior Nora Anderson, who took a class on Shakespeare with Stallybrass, said he is an asset to Penn.

"I think it is an excellent achievement for Penn," Anderson said. "He is very intellectual and very willing to engage with students. He is great -- not pretentious at all and just a really good guy."

Students emphasized that it is his insights and teaching methods that make him so popular on Penn's campus.

"I studied Shakespeare with him and found him to be an excellent lecturer," Kim said. "His depth of knowledge and his interest in Renaissance culture and literature are really contagious. His readings of Shakespeare are distinctive and engaging."

Kim, who also took Stallybrass' Shakespeare class, is one of his advisees.

"Professor Stallybrass is a very competent and accessible adviser," Kim noted. "He demonstrates enthusiasm for both his own work and that of students, as well."

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