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Associate Professor Liam Semler

Associate Professor Liam Semler

BA (Hons) PhD Macq.
Associate Professor

+61 2 9351 6852
Room N325, John Woolley Building (A20)

My primary research interests are: Shakespeare pedagogy and the teaching and learning of literature at school and university; the classical inheritance in English Renaissance literature; early modern women’s writing; and early modern literature and the visual arts with particular reference to ‘mannerism’ and the ‘grotesque’ from 1500-1700.

Current projects

  • Shakespeare Reloaded: Innovative Approaches to Teaching and Learning Shakespeare in Australian Universities and Secondary Schools (ARC Linkage Project, 2008-10). This is a collaborative project between the English Department, University of Sydney, and Barker College (Hornsby, NSW). We are currently developing the Shakespeare Reloaded website.
  • ‘The Early Modern Grotesque: English Sources and Documents.’ This project is to create a fully annotated, chronologically arranged, sourcebook of primary resources relating to the grotesque as defined in English literature 1500-1700.
  • ‘Margaret Cavendish’s Early Works.’ This project explores the philosophical and poetic engagements of Cavendish’s early works (from 1649-56).

Publications 2005-2011

Books
Journal articles
  • Semler, L E Forthcoming 2011, Margaret Cavendish's early engagement with Descartes and Hobbes: philosophical revisitation and poetic selection, Intellectual History Review
  • Semler, L E, Colnan, S Forthcoming 2011, Shakespeare Reloaded (2008-10): A School and University Literature Research Collaboration, Australian Literary Studies
  • Semler, L E 2009, The Shakespeare reloaded Bard Blitz: a literary analysis and essay building module, mETAphor (4), 30-44
  • Semler, L E 2006, A Proximate Prince: The Gooey Business of 'Hamlet' Criticism, Sydney Studies in English, 32, 97-122
  • Semler, L E 2006, Review: Psalm Culture and Early Modern English Literature, Early Modern Literary Studies: A Journal of Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century English Literature, 12(1), 1-9
  • Semler, L E 2006, Robert Dallington's Hypnerotomachia and the Protestant Antiquity of Elizabethan England, Studies in Philology, 103(2), 208-241
  • Semler, L E 2005, Marlovian Therapy: The Chastisement of Ovid in Hero and Leander, English Literary Renaissance, 35(2), 159-186
  • Semler, L E 2005, Review: Women and Religious Writing in Early Modern England, Early Modern Literary Studies: A Journal of Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century English Literature, 11(1)
Book chapters
  • Semler, L E Forthcoming 2011, The magnetic attraction of Margaret Cavendish and Walter Charleton, Early Modern Englishwomen Testing Ideas, Ashgate, Aldershot
  • Kelly, P, Semler, L E 2010, Introduction: Word and self estranged: topographies of meaning in Early Modern England, Word and Self Estranged in English Texts, 1550-1660, Ashgate, Aldershot, 1-11
  • Semler, L E 2010, The Ruins of Persepolis: Grotesque Perception in Thomas Herbert's Travels, Word and Self Estranged in English Texts, 1550-1660, Ashgate, Aldershot, 33-59
  • Semler, L E 2009, Virtue Transformation and Exemplarity in the Lyfe of Johan Picus, A Companion to Thomas More, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, Madison, 95-113
  • Semler, L E 2006, Designs on the Self: Inigo Jones, Marginal Writing and Renaissance Self-Assembly, Early Modern Autobiography: Theories, Genres, Practices, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 252-267
  • Semler, L E 2006, Select Bibliography, The Cambridge Companion to John Donne, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 259-277
  • Semler, L E 2005, Mapping the Grotesque: Inventing and possessing the world in Early-Modern England, Travel and Travellers from Bede to Dampier, Cambridge Scholars Press, Newcastle upon Tyne, 177-206
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Areas of teaching and Specific Topics

Teaching
  • Medieval and Renaissance English literature and culture.
  • ENGL 1002 Narratives of Romance and Adventure
  • ENGL 2663 Virtual Renaissance
  • ENGL 3651 Christopher Marlowe
  • ENGL 6982 Shakespeare and Modernity
  • ENGL 6985 Shakespeare and his Contemporaries
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