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Joshua Held
Assistant Professor
English, Humanities, & Languages
Morrison 313
Education
BA, English and English / Education, Trinity International University
MA, English, Indiana University
PhD, English, Indiana University
Biography
Joshua R. Held teaches courses in Shakespeare, English Education, and composition. He also works with the English Education candidates and serves as University Mentor for these student teachers. He holds a teaching license in the state of Illinois, where he taught at Adlai E. Stevenson High School, one of the only high schools in the US to win the Department of Education’s Blue Ribbon Award five times.
His book Bold Conscience: Luther to Shakespeare to Milton (University of Alabama Press, 2023) chronicles the shifting conception of conscience in early Modern England as it evolved from a faculty of restraint—“coward conscience”—to one of bold and forthright self-assertion. His next book project, “Folio, Quarto, Race, Gender: Reading Difference in Shakespeare’s Tragedies,” argues that Shakespeare’s 1623 First Folio reveals a greater openness to issues of race and gender that are of urgent concern in the twenty-first century.
Courses Taught
ENG 1213 | Composition II
ENG 4113 | Age of Shakespeare
ENG 4903 | Methods and Media in Secondary English