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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.

I am President of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association (AULLA) and Director of the Medieval and Early Modern Centre (University of Sydney).

I welcome inquiries from potential postgraduate students who might be interested to pursue thesis work in any aspect of early modern English literature (my specialist period is 1500-1700). Some of the research areas explored by my current and recently graduated students include: poetry and philosophy in the work of Francis Bacon; spying and surveillance in the works of Shakespeare; Shakespeare and complexity theory; Shakespeare in present-day prison theatre; Shakespeare and pedagogy at school and university; and English translations of Hugo Grotius’ religious drama. I am especially keen to supervise students who may wish to research visual arts and literature in the period; or women’s writing in the period.

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 2005-2013

Books
Journal articles
  • LE Semler ‘Margaret Cavendish’s Early Engagement with Descartes and Hobbes: Philosophical Revisitation and Poetic Selection.’ Intellectual History Review 22.3 (2012): 327-53.
  • LE Semler [co-authored with Shauna Colnan] ‘Shakespeare Reloaded (2008-10): A School and University Literature Research Collaboration.’ Australian Literary Studies for Schools 1 (2009). See: http://www.australianliterarystudies.com.au/alsforschools.html
  • 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
  • L.E. Semler. ‘“Fortify yourself in your decay”: Sounding Rhyme and Rhyming Effects in Shakespeare’s Sonnets.’ In The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare’s Poetry. Ed. Jonathan Post. Oxford, 2013.
  • L.E. Semler. ‘Emergence in Ardenspace: Shakespeare Pedagogy, As You Like It, and Modus Iferandi.’ In Teaching Shakespeare Beyond the Centre: Australasian Perspectives. Eds. Kate Flaherty, Penny Gay and L. E. Semler. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Pp. 97-107.
  • L.E. Semler. ‘“Loe an antick Persian”: Orienting Anticality in Thomas Herbert’s Travels (1634, 1638, 1664)’. In Sprache, Literatur, Kultur: Translatio delectat. Festschrift für Lothar Černý zum 65. Geburtstag. [Language, Literature, Culture: Translatio delectate: Festschrift for the 65th Birthday of Lothar Cerny.] Eds. Matthias Bauer, Rüdiger Pfeiffer-Rupp, Ursula Wienen and Claudia Sasse. Münster: LIT, 2011. Pp. 141-56.
  • L.E. Semler. ‘The Magnetic Attraction of Margaret Cavendish and Walter Charleton.’ In Early Modern Englishwomen Testing Ideas. Eds. Jo Wallwork and Paul Salzman. Farnham: Ashgate, 2011. Pp. 55-72.
  • 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 2650 Reading Poetry
  • ENGL 2658 Love and Desire in Early Modern England
  • ENGL 2663 Virtual Renaissance
  • ENGL 3651 Christopher Marlowe
  • ENGL 6982 Shakespeare and Modernity
  • ENGL 6985 Shakespeare and his Contemporaries
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