Rate My Professor Stephen Greenblatt

Greenblatt's research specializations encompass Shakespeare, early modern literature and culture, literature of travel and exploration, religion and literature, literature and anthropology, and literary and cultural theory. He is the founder of the new historicism school of literary criticism. Key publications include Renaissance Self-Fashioning (1980), Shakespearean Negotiations (1988), Marvelous Possessions (1991), Hamlet in Purgatory (2001), Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare (2004), The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (2011), The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve (2017), Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics (2018), Second Chances: Shakespeare and Freud (2024), and Dark Renaissance (2025). He serves as general editor of The Norton Shakespeare (1997) and The Norton Anthology of English Literature (2000), has edited seven collections of criticism, and is a founding coeditor of the journal Representations. His honors include the 2012 Pulitzer Prize and 2011 National Book Award for The Swerve, the 2016 Holberg Prize, two Guggenheim Fellowships, the MLA’s James Russell Lowell Prize (awarded twice), the Distinguished Humanist Award from the Mellon Foundation, and the William Shakespeare Award for Classical Theatre. Greenblatt was president of the Modern Language Association of America and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Philosophical Society, Accademia degli Arcadi, and a fellow of the British Academy.