Claire J. C. Eager

Biography

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. Prof. Eager has previously taught at Colorado College and the University of Virginia. Their research in early modern literature and material culture focuses on practical, aesthetic, and ethical relations among poetry, drama, print, and landscape; their teaching interests extend from global medieval studies to identity and inclusion in contemporary children’s literature to poetry, poetics, and environmental humanities across periods. “Vertuall Paradise: Vaulting Ambitions Brought to Earth in Early Modern England,” their book manuscript, traces visions of paradise in early modern English literature alongside the material practices of making poems, plays, books, and gardens in the period, with particular attention to imperial, ecological, and ethical implications of these cross-media conversations. A new research project, “War at the Margins,” considers the aesthetics and ethics of presenting war landscapes in early modern poetry, drama, visual art, and print. Prof. Eager has presented and published on Chaucer, Spenser, Donne, Shakespeare, Milton, and early modern printing and horticulture and conducted research in England, Scotland, Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany. Originally from Washington, DC, with academic and professional sojourns in Boston, Oxford (UK), Cape Town, Charlottesville, and Colorado Springs, they enjoy reading, writing, hiking, baking, taking care of plants, and spending time with their spouse, cat, and assorted niblings.

Courses Taught

• 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 16012: Writing our Worlds:  James Baldwin and Beyond
• English 22015: Shakespeare:  War and Memory
• English 22017: Rewriting Shakespeare / Shakespeare Rewriting
• English 22018: Shipwrecked with Shakespeare!
• English 23040: Global? Book? History?
• English 23042: British Literature to 1800: Identity, Inclusion, Illustration
• English 24035: Green Shade:  Poems in Place
• English 24038: Sonnets in Time and Space
• First Year Seminar: Where Is Poetry?

Selected Publications & Presentations

• “Paradise Now: Desiring English Eden in Shakespearean Gardens and Early Modern Horticultural Books.” Shakespeare 19, no. 2 (3 April 2023): 152–79. https://doi.org/10.1080/17450918.2023.2193566.
• “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. https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526136923.00010

Awards & Honors

• ACLS Project Development Grant, 2021
• GLCA Internationalization Innovation Mini-Grant, 2021
• Early Printed Books in Antwerp Fellowship, Plantin-Moretus Museum & Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library, 2019
• Richard Guy Wilson Prize for Excellence in the Study of Buildings, Landscapes & Places, University 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