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Jay Zysk

administrator

Jay Zysk, PhD

Associate Dean

College of Arts & Sciences

Contact

508-999-8036

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Education

2011Brown UniversityPhD
2007Brown UniversityMA
2005Stonehill CollegeBA

Teaching

  • Shakespeare
  • Early English drama
  • British literature 1300-1700
  • Literary theory

Teaching

Programs

Teaching

Courses

An exploration of literary works, genres, and writers of the medieval world (roughly 750-1500 CE). The course situates a range of medieval poetry, drama, and prose within a specific topical and/or theoretical focus, such as "Drama Before Shakespeare" or "Writing Desire in the Middle Ages." Emphasis will be placed on the development of research-driven writing projects and oral presentation.

Research

Research activities

  • Advisory Board, Literature, Routledge Resources Online: The Renaissance World
  • Subject Editor, British Isles and Northern Europe, Routledge Resources Online: The Renaissance World
  • Subject Editor, "British Isles and Northern Europe," Routledge Encyclopedia of the Renaissance World
  • Weinmann Family Fellowship, Folger Shakespeare Library (2014)
  • Teaching Medieval Drama and Performance, Folger Shakespeare Library Yearlong Colloquium (2016)

Research

Research interests

  • Shakespeare and early modern drama
  • Literature and the Reformation
  • Periodization studies
  • Early modern histories of the body
  • Shakespeare and pedagogy

Select publications

Jay Zysk is Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at UMass Dartmouth. As Associate Dean he oversees curriculum, academic program development and assessment, faculty development, faculty personnel matters, and student engagement initiatives for CAS. Prior to his appointment as Associate Dean, Jay served as Director of the Office of Faculty Development from 2019-2024. 

Associate Dean Zysk received his PhD in English literature from Brown University. His research and teaching focus on early British literature, Shakespeare, early English drama, and Shakespeare and pedagogy. 

His published work focuses on intersections between theology and drama, as well as between religion and secularity, across the medieval/early modern divide. He is the author of Shadow and Substance: Eucharistic Controversy and English Drama across the Reformation Divide (University of Notre Dame Press, 2017), and co-editor (with Katherine Steele Brokaw) of Sacred and Secular Transactions in the Age of Shakespeare (Northwestern University Press, 2019). 

His current work focuses on Shakespeare and pedagogy. With Rachael Deagman Simonetta, he is authoring a book on "Shakespeare and Blended Learning," under contract with Cambridge University Press, which aims to transform traditional models of face-to-face teaching of Shakespeare's plays with innovative and experimental pedagogies that thoughtfully integrate physical and digital modes of learning. 

In addition, Professor Zysk has published several essays on Shakespeare and early modern drama in Christianity and Literature, English Literary Renaissance, postmedieval, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, and a number of edited book collections. In 2014, he received a short-term fellowship from the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, and in 2016 participated in a yearlong colloquium on “Teaching Medieval Drama” at the Folger.

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