Helen Brooks

Senior Lecturer
Department
Ph.D., Stanford University (1980)
M.A., San Francisco State University (1971)
B.A., San Francisco State University (1968)

Earned a Joint Ph.D. in English and Humanities at Stanford in 1980. Publications on John Donne; on the poetry of John Donne and Adrienne Rich (a commissioned article in The John Donne Journal, Vol. 26, 2007); on the poetry of John Donne and the modern stone lithographs of June Wayne in The John Donne Journal, Vol. 28, 2009; on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola and Early Modern poetry; on the poetry of John Davies of Hereford for the Dictionary of Literary Biography; and served as a Contributing Editor for The Variorum Edition of the Poetry of John Donne: The Holy Sonnets, Vol. 7 published by Indiana University Press, 2005. Teaching includes courses on John Donne, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Early Modern women's literature, literature and gender, Renaissance/Early Modern poetry, Renaissance/Early Modern intellectual and cultural history, theoretical approaches to literature. Other research and teaching interests include interdisciplinarity; literature and the advent of mathematical perspective; reception theory (including cognitive studies, the neurosciences and literary and artistic forms); evolutionary theory and literature; modern poetry; and drama.  Appointed to the Affiliated Faculty for the Program in Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Stanford (2010-present).  Elected as an officer and Executive Committee member of The John Donne Society in 2005.  Re-elected to The John Donne Society Executive Committee for 2011-2013. Appointed to the Editorial Advisory Board of the academic journal: Forum on Public Policy, published by Oxford Round Table and the University of Oxford (2005-present).  Elected to Marquis Who's Who of American Women (2007-2014) and to Who's Who in America (2008-2014). Recipient in February, 2010 of The John Donne Society Distinguished Service Award; Received The Dinkelspiel Award for Outstanding Contributions to Undergraduate Education at Stanford (1994).

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Fields of Interest

John Donne, interdisciplinarity, new historicism; literature and the advent of mathematical perspective and the modern scientific method of inquiry; reception theory (including cognitive studies and the neurosciences), gender studies, evolutionary theory and literature, modern poetry and drama