Scott Oldenburg

Undergraduate institution: San Diego State University (BA English, Cert. in TESL)

Graduated from SF State: MA in English Literature, 1999

Other related SF State certificates/degrees: None (although I did take the first few courses in the Composition Certificate)

Current employer/institution and position: Associate Professor, English Department, Tulane University.

In 2007 I completed my Ph.D. in English at SUNY Buffalo where I specialized in 16th and 17th century British literature. I am now an associate professor of English at Tulane University where I regularly teach undergraduate and graduate courses on Shakespeare, Spenser, and various early modern topics. My first book, Alien Albion: Literature and Immigration in Early Modern England (U. of Toronto Press, 2014), focuses on early modern literary texts that imagine ways of establishing multicultural communities in the wake of an unprecedented influx of refugees from the continent. I am currently working on a book about the social network of a little known weaver-poet in sixteenth-century London (and kicking myself for never taking a course with Bill Christmas whose work fits so well with this new project!).

My time at SF State was intellectually invigorating and indispensable to my career. I taught ESL in Oakland in the mornings and would immediately rush to SF State so that I could spend some time perusing the holdings in the library: early modern travel narratives, the calendar of state papers, and more rested on the shelves of the J. Paul Leonard Library, awaiting eager readers and researchers like myself. Seminars with Geoffrey Green, Wai-Leung Kwok, Bruce Avery, and Deborah Swanson provided me with the foundation on which I've built my academic career. These courses established a structure, but one within which I found the freedom to develop my own intellectual interests and writing style. In fact, my first major article, "The Riddle of Blackness in England's National Family Romance" (JEMCS, 2001), was a revised version of a chapter from my master's thesis, directed by the late Randall Nakayama. The Master's Program in English at SF State provided me with more than I ever could have imagined!