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 and researches early modern English literature with a focus on Shakespeare and Milton. His Bold Conscience: Luther to Shakespeare to Milton (Univ. of Alabama Press, 2023) chronicles the shifting idea of conscience in early modern England from a faculty of restraint—“coward conscience”—to one of forthright self-assertion. He has published essays in Shakespeare Studies, Essays in Criticism, Studies in Philology, and elsewhere.

He is working on three book projects:
1 | “Revising Blackness: Shakespearean Race and Textuality” argues that Shakespeare across his career tinkers with constructions of Black characters, whether through unstable perception of skin colors or through textual shifts. Some of this work appears in Shakespeare Survey and in Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies.
2 | “Milton’s Pauline Universalism: Race and Religion in Early Modern England” argues that Milton uses Paul to stimulate his own thinking about the relation between individual and society. Some portion of this appears in Milton Quarterly.
3 | “Double Conscience: Literature and Religion in Early Modern England” unpacks at once the flexibility of conscience as seen through varied literary genres and the distinctness of genres in early modern England as media for spying on the inner self. Some of this work appears in SEL Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900, and in Milton Studies.

At Southeastern Oklahoma State University, he coordinates the English Education program and serves as a University Mentor for student teachers in English Language Arts.

Courses Taught

CV

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