Mark Rasmussen
Charles J. Luellen Professor of English
Chair of the Linguistics Program
Offices & Programs
Education
BA and MA: Harvard
M.A. and PhD: The Johns Hopkins University
Expertise
Renaissance literature - Spenser and Chaucer - Shakespeare - History of language - Expository writing; Teaching responsibilities in British literature, medieval and Renaissance periods especially, including Chaucer, Arthurian literature, Spenser, and Shakespeare, as well as the history of the English language, literary theory, and general humanities courses; Special expertise in Chaucer, Arthurian literature, Shakespeare, and Renaissance literature; Published essays on a variety of medieval and Renaissance topics, as well as edited collection "Renaissance Literature and Its Formal Engagements (2002);" Most recent publication, chapter on “Complaints and Daphnaïda” in the "Oxford Handbook of Edmund Spenser," forthcoming; Prior work experience in freelance writing and public relations.
Biography
Mark Rasmussen is Charles J. Luellen Professor of English at Centre College, where he has taught since 1989.
His teaching responsibilities at the college encompass courses in medieval and Renaissance literature (including Chaucer, Arthurian literature, Spenser, and Shakespeare), literary criticism and theory, and the history of the English language, as well as the British literature survey and first-year humanities. He says that his greatest challenges, and greatest pleasures, as a teacher come from encouraging students to connect with the literature of earlier periods, and helping them to become better writers.
A summa cum laude graduate of Harvard, Rasmussen has published essays and given papers on a wide variety of medieval and Renaissance topics. His recent publications include “Shakespeare and the Critics: Rhetoric, Form, Aesthetics,” in The Cambridge Guide to the Worlds of Shakespeare (2016), as well as a critical introduction, “Jill Mann’s Patience,” to Life in Words (2014), the collected essays of the distinguished medievalist Jill Mann, a volume that he edited. Rasmussen’s other edited collection, Renaissance Literature and Its Formal Engagements (2002), has had a lasting impact within its field, renewing attention to questions of form in English Renaissance literature. His current project is a study of poetic complaint from classical antiquity to the Renaissance.
Rasmussen has been a faculty leader, having served the College as director of writing, chair of the English program and the John C. Young Scholars committee, and having chaired the Committee on Curriculum and Academic Standards during a two-year process of curriculum reform. In 2001-02, 2005-06, and 2014-15 he directed Centre’s study abroad program in Strasbourg, France, and he served as co-director of the London program in spring 2009. From 2010 to 2013 he served a three-year term as chair of the Humanities Division. He has received the Kirk award for teaching excellence, twice been named a Centre Scholar, was awarded a Stodghill Research Professorship in 2009, and was named Charles J. Luellen Professor of English in 2012. He is also on the faculty of the Sewanee School of Letters.
In addition to his B.A. from Harvard, Rasmussen holds an M.A. from Harvard, M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from The Johns Hopkins University, and he is a member of Phi Beta Kappa.