Peter Berek

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Peter Berek

Professor of English
638 Williston Memorial Library
413-538-2311
pberek@mtholyoke.edu
office hours, Spring 2008: by appointment.

Education
B.A. Amherst College, 1961
Ph.D. Harvard University, 1967

Specialties

Shakespeare
English Renaissance literature

Peter Berek has taught courses in Shakespeare, English Renaissance poetry and drama, the theory and practice of comedy, modern British novels, and African-American literature, as well as introductions to literature and English 101. He has published essays on poets such as Milton and Marvell; his more recent scholarly work focuses on Shakespeare and early modern theater, with a particular interest in representations of Jews, gender and sexuality, and the history of the book. Berek’s current project studies the significance of generic terms such as comedy and tragedy in the market for printed books in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. A recent article on playwrights Beaumont and Fletcher won The Monroe Kirk Spears Award for the best essay of the year published in the journal Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900. Berek has twice won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Though teaching and writing have been at the heart of his professional life, Berek has spent a good deal of time as an academic administrator. He came to Mount Holyoke in 1990 and served as Dean of Faculty and Provost until 1998. In 1995 he was Mount Holyoke’s Interim President. Before coming to Mount Holyoke, he taught at Williams College for 23 years, serving at various times as chair of the English department, Dean of the College and Special Assistant to the President.

Selected Recent Publications:

“The Jew as Renaissance Man,” Renaissance Quarterly 51 (1998), 128-162.

“Cross-Dressing, Gender and Absolutism in the Beaumont and Fletcher Plays,” SEL: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, 44, 2 (Spring 2004), 359-377.

“Genres, Early Modern Theatrical Title Pages, and the Authority of Print,” in Marta Straznicky, ed., The Book of the Play: Playwrights, Stationers and Readers in Early Modern England, University of Massachusetts Press (2006), pp. 159-176.

"'Follow the Money': Sex, Murder, Print and Domestic Tragedy," forthcoming in Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England (2008).

“Tragedy, Title Pages, Nationalism, Protestantism and Print,” forthcoming in Modern Philology.

Link to Peter Berek's courses Web site.

Current Teaching Schedule
Fall 2007
English 312 Shakespeare: the Theatre and the Book