Joe Loewenstein

Joe Loewenstein

Professor of English​
Director of Undergraduate Studies, Comparative Literature
Director of the Humanities Digital Workshop and the Interdisciplinary Project in the Humanities
Performing Arts Department (Affiliate)
PHD, Yale University
research interests:
  • Renaissance Literature
  • Book Culture
  • Early Modern Literature
  • 18th Century British Literature
  • Drama
  • Literature and Philosophy
  • Literature and Politics
  • Literature and Religion
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    contact info:

    office hours:

    • Umrath 235: Thursdays from 1:15 - 3:00 PM
      Duncker 204: Fridays from 11:30 - 12:30 PM

    mailing address:

    • Washington University
      CB 1122
      One Brookings Drive
      St. Louis, MO 63130-4899
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    ​Professor Loewenstein's two most recent books are studies of Early Modern intellectual property, the prehistory of copyright, but he is also extremely interested in prosody and poetics.

    Professor Loewenstein's two most recent books - The Author's Due (2002) and Jonson and Possessive Authorship (2002) - are studies of Early Modern intellectual property, the prehistory of copyright, but he is also extremely interested in prosody and poetics. Most of his scholarly energy is now devoted to an edition of the Complete Works of Edmund Spenser for Oxford University Press, a project in which a number of undergraduates and graduate students, from Arts & Sciences and from Engineering, are involved. But he is also working on a study of the material props of the Self in Early Modern England - spectacles, watches, commonplace books, signet rings, and poems: his working title for this undertaking is "Accessorizing the Renaissance." Professor Loewenstein is also the director of the Interdisciplinary Project in the Humanities. He teaches courses on Shakespeare, Milton, and Spenser; on literature and skepticism; on the cultural poetics of the book; and on the ways writers read. Professor Loewenstein also directs the Humanities Digital Workshop.

    Courses

    • L14 3725: The Renaissance of Doubt
    • L14 395C: Shakespeare
    • L14 412: Competition, Emulation, and Imitation in Sixteenth-Century Literature
    • L14 498: Spenser
    • L14 498W: The Spenser Lab
    • L14 514: Seminar: Accessorizing the Renaissance