Claire J. C. Eager

Claire J. C. Eager teaches medieval and early modern British literature, Shakespeare, Austen, Baldwin, composition, poetry, creative nonfiction, children’s literature, book history, and environmental studies at The College of Wooster. She has previously taught at Colorado College and the University of Virginia. Her research in early modern British literature and material culture focuses on poetry, print, and landscape in the context of global contact; her teaching interests extend from medieval studies to contemporary poetry, environmental writing, and anti-racism. Her book-in-progress, Vertuall Paradise: Vaulting Ambitions Brought to Earth in Tudor and Stuart England, investigates visions of paradise in early modern English literature alongside the material practices of making poems, books, and gardens in the period, with a particular focus on imperial, ecological, and ethical implications. Prof. Eager has presented and published on Chaucer, Spenser, Donne, Shakespeare, Milton, and early modern horticulture and conducted research in England, Scotland, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany. She has lived in Wooster, Colorado Springs, Charlottesville, Oxford, Boston, and Washington, DC, and enjoys reading, writing, hiking, baking, taking care of plants, and spending time with her spouse, cat, and assorted nephews.

English 12000: Language, Literature and Culture – Strange Journeys in Children’s Literature
English 12035:  Language, Literature and Culture – Will and Jane in the World
English 16000:  Intro. to Non-fictional Writing – Writing our Worlds:  James Baldwin and Beyond
English 22001: Shakespeare – War and Memory in Shakespeare
English 22001: Shakespeare – Shipwrecked with Shakespeare
English 23040: Global? Book? History?
English 23042: British Literature to 1800 – Pictures and Conversations: Identity, Inclusion, Illustration
English 24035:  Green Shade:  Poems in Place

•  “A Fountain for the Countess: Co-Creating Paradise in Donne’s ‘Twicknam Garden.’” Studies in Philology 117.3 (8 July 2020): 520–78. https://doi.org/10.1353/sip.2020.0021
• “The Source of Poetry: Pernaso, Paradise, and Spenser’s Chaucerian Craft,” in Rereading Chaucer and Spenser: Dan Geffrey with the New Poete, eds. T. Badcoe, R. Stenner, & G. Griffiths, Manchester UP, 2019, pp. 75-97.

• Early Printed Books in Antwerp Fellowship, Plantin­Moretus Museum & Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library, 2019
• Richard Guy Wilson Prize for Excellence in the Study of Buildings, Landscapes & Places, Uniiversity of Virginia, 2017
• Co-Curator, “Faulkner: Life and Works” (2017); “Shakespeare by the Book: Four Centuries of Printing, Editing, and Publishing” (2016), University of Virginia Special Collections
• Certificate of Proficiency with Specialization in Book Design & Production, Rare Book School, 2016
• The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography, 2014-2016 (Senior Fellow, 2017-present)
• Dumbarton Oaks Short-Term Pre-Doctoral Residency in Garden & Landscape Studies, 2014