Associate Professor

• Email: jhferguson@uh.edu
• English
• (713) 743-9017, 235 Roy G. Cullen Building
• The Honors College
• (713) 743-2956, 206C M. D. Anderson 
• CV

Jamie H. Ferguson is Associate Professor of English and Honors. He teaches courses in early modern literature (especially poetry), Shakespeare, the history and theory of translation, biblical literature, and the Great Books of antiquity and modernity. His first book, "Reformation Hermeneutics and Literary Language in Early Modern England: Faith in the Language", on the convergence of biblical hermeneutics and English literature from Tyndale to Donne, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2022. He is working on a new book on “European Biblical Poetics,” which will treat convergences of biblical hermeneutics and literary art in sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century Latin, Italian, French, Polish, and English. He has published articles in "Edmund Spenser in Context", "The Oxford Handbook of the Early Modern Bible", Sixteenth Century Journal, "Psalms in the Early Modern World", and The Journal for the Study of the Old Testament. He is completing an annotated translation of Joachim du Bellay’s "Deffence et illustration de la langue françoyse" (1549) and has published many translations of contemporary Polish poetry. 

Jamie Ferguson regularly gives papers at the annual meetings of the Renaissance Society of America, the Sixteenth Century Society, the Shakespeare Association of America, and other national and international conferences. For the Sixteenth Century Society 2022 conference, he has organized a series of panels and a roundtable on the topic of early modern literature and religion. He has received New Faculty Research and multiple Martha Gano Houstoun Research Grants at the University of Houston and participated in the NEH Summer Seminar, “Tudor Books and Readers, 1485-1603,” in summer 2012. He has been a finalist for the University of Houston Teaching Excellence Award and has won several lecture awards in the Honors College. He is on leave in fall 2022.

Education

• Ph.D., Indiana University Bloomington, Departments of English and Comparative Literature
• M.A. University of York (U.K.)
• B.A. University of Massachusetts, Amherst  

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Research Interests

Renaissance/Early Modern Literature, Poetry and Poetics, Biblical Literature, the History of Biblical Interpretation and Hermeneutics, Translation Studies, Language Theory

Current Book Project

"European Biblical Poetics: Reformation Hermeneutics and Literary Language in Early Modern Europe"

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Selected Publications

Scholarly Monograph

Scholarly Articles

• “The Bible and Biblical Hermeneutics.” "Edmund Spenser in Context". Ed. Andrew Escobedo. Cambridge UP, 2016. 130-38.
•  “The Roman Inkhorn: Religious Resistance to Latinism in Early Modern England.” "The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in Early Modern England, c. 1530-1700". Ed. Kevin Killeen et al. OUP, 2015. 83-97. Awarded the 2016 Roland H. Bainton Prize for Reference Work.
• “Faith in the Language: Biblical Authority and the Meaning of English in the More-Tyndale Polemics.” Sixteenth Century Journal 43/4 (2012): 989-1011.
• “The Epic and the Prophetic: A Reading of the Primeval History Against 1 Samuel 15-16 and 2 Samuel 7.” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 36/3 (2012): 297-320.
• “Miles Coverdale and the Claims of Paraphrase.” "Psalms in the Early Modern World". Ed. Kari Boyd McBride, Linda Phyllis Austern, and David Orvis. Ashgate Press, 2011. 137-54.
• “Satan’s Supper: Language and Sacrament in Paradise Lost.” "Uncircumscribed Mind: Reading Milton Deeply." Ed. Charles Durham and Kris Pruitt. Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press, 2008. 129-45.

Literary Translations

• Jerzy Jarniewicz, “A Poem for the Nameless”; Marcin Swietlicki, “and so on, more or less along those lines”; Eugeniusz Tkaczyszyn-Dycki, “Ill-Concealed Remorse.” Contemporary Polish Poetry. Spec. issue of Lyric Poetry Review (Spring 2005): 31, 78, 80.
• Eugeniusz Tkaczyszyn-Dycki, two poems; Darek Foks, five poems; Krzysztof Jaworski, four poems. "Carnivorous Boy and Carnivorous Bird: Poems by Polish Poets Born After 1958". Ed. Marcin Baran et al. Brookline, MA: Zephyr Press, 2004. 100-03, 175-91, 193-201.
• Andrzej Sosnowski, two poems. Cambridge Conference of Contemporary Poetry Review 11 (2001).
• Jerzy Jarniewicz, five poems; Andrzej Sosnowski, “I Will Forbear.” Przekladaniec: A Journal of Literary Translation. Special Issue (2001): 62-69, 120-23.
• Adam Wiedemann, “And suddenly a single moment…” Beacons 6 (2000): 152-53.
• Andrzej Sosnowski, three poems; Darek Foks, three poems; Radoslaw Kobierski, “Untitled”; Jacek Gutorow, “Allusive Sonnet (III)”; Eugeniusz Tkaczyszyn-Dycki, two poems; Adam Wiedemann, “Bandaid (2).” New Polish Writing. Ed. William Martin. Spec. issue of Chicago Review 46.3-4 (2000): 215-18, 224-31.

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Teaching

English

• Literature and Religion in Early Modern England (ENGL7396)
• History and Theory of Translation (ENGL8390)
• Reading for Form in English Renaissance Literature (ENGL8344)
• English Literature of the Renaissance and Reformation (ENGL8344)
• Shakespeare’s English Histories and Their Editors (ENGL8342)
• Shakespeare’s Tragedies and Their Editors (ENGL8342)
• Shakespeare’s Histories and Comedies and Their Editors (ENGL8343)
• Seminar in English Renaissance Literature (ENGL7363)

Undergraduate

• Bible as Literature (ENGL4360)
• Shakespeare – Major Works (ENGL3306)
• English Renaissance Non-Dramatic Literature (ENGL3305)

The Honors College

• Shakespeare and Opera, with Prof. Howard Pollack (HON4397/MUSI4397/MUSI6397)
• ‘The Human Situation I-II’ (Literature of Western Antiquity & Modernity)

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