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Department of English

Roger Moore

Associate Professor of the Practice

www.rogeremoore.com

Roger E. Moore has taught at Vanderbilt since 1995 and currently holds the rank of Associate Professor of the Practice.  Moore specializes in eighteenth-century literature and culture but has written widely on early British literature, including scholarly essays on Christopher Marlowe, Sir Philip Sidney, and Geoffrey Chaucer.  His book, Jane Austen and the Reformation:  Remembering the Sacred Landscape (Ashgate/Routledge 2016), places Austen firmly within a long national conversation about the meaning and consequences of the Reformation and argues that her representation of medieval abbeys, churches, and chapels indicates her nostalgia for England’s monastic past.   His current project re-evaluates the relationship of Austen to Edmund Burke and various strands of eighteenth-century conservatism.

The recipient of the Harriet S. Gilliam Award for Excellence in Teaching (2003) and the Ernest A. Jones Faculty Adviser Award (2008), Moore teaches ENGL 3360 (Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Literature), ENGL 3364 (Eighteenth-Century English Novel), and ENGL 3370 (The Bible in Literature), in addition to courses on Jane Austen.

Moore served as Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Science from 2013-2020, and recently completed a three-year term as Senior Associate Dean (2021-24).  In the latter role, he oversaw all matters relating to undergraduate education.

Moore currently serves on the Board of Directors of The Jane Austen Society of North America as well as the Editorial Board of Persuasions:  The Jane Austen Journal.  He was a member of the Board of Directors of the Nashville Ballet (2015-2023) and the Vestry of Christ Church Cathedral (Episcopal), where he was Senior Warden from 2017-19.

Representative publications

  • “Medieval Jane Austen: A Response to Fritz Kemmler.” Connotations: A Journal of Debate 34 (2025): 81-89.
  • “Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing? Jane Austen’s Clergymen and their Literary Ancestors.” Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal 46 (2024): 63-80.
  • “Is Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen’s Most Religious Novel?” Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal, 44 (2022): 73-91.
  • “Northanger Before the Tilneys: Austen’s Abbey and the Religious Past.” Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal. 41 (2019): 119-137.
  • Jane Austen and the Reformation: Remembering the Sacred Landscape (Ashgate, January 2016)
  • https://www.routledge.com/Jane-Austen-and-the-Reformation-Remembering-the-Sacred-Landscape/Moore/p/book/9781472432834
  • "The Hidden History of 'Northanger Abbey': Jane Austen and the Dissolution of the Monasteries" Religion and Literature 43.1 (Spring 2011): 55-80.
  • "Sir Philip Sidney's Defense of Prophesying." SEL: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, 50.1 (Winter 2010): 35-62.
  • "Quaker Writing in the Seventeenth-Century." in Teaching Early-Modern Prose. Eds. Margaret E. Ferguson and Susannah Monta. New York: MLA Press, 2010. 132-142.
  • "Religion." A Companion to Jane Austen. Eds. Claudia L. Johnson and Clara Tuite. London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. 314-322.
  • "'I'll rouse my senses, and awake myself': Marlowe's The Jew of Malta and the Renaissance Gnostic Tradition." Religion and Literature 37.3 (2005): 37-58.
  • "The Spirit and the Letter: Marlowe's Tamburlaine and Elizabethan Religious Radicalism." Studies in Philology 99 (2002): 123-151.