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English Department

English Department

Chance Woods

Lecturer

Research Area

  • Late Medieval and Renaissance Intellectual History
  • Renaissance Constructions of Antiquity and the Middle Ages
  • Early Modern Catholicism
  • The Intersection of Philosophy and Literature in the Renaissance
  • Religious Conversion in Early Modern England
  • The Literatures of Mysticism (Fourteenth to Seventeenth Centuries)
  • Mysticism and Textuality
  • History of Apophatic Discourse
  • Theories of the Baroque

Current Research

  • The Elusive Corpus: Reading the Catholic Mystical Body in Seventeenth-Century England
  • Professional Societies
  • Medieval Academy of America
  • Renaissance Society of America
  • Modern Language Association

Professional Honors

  • University Graduate Fellowship (Vanderbilt University: 2011-2016)
  • Rudolph C. Bambas Fellowship (University of Oklahoma: 2008-2011)

Representative publications

Publications

  • "Negative Theology," article co-authored with William Franke for the Springer Encyclopedia of Sciences and Religions
  • Review Essay: Noam Reisner’s Milton and the Ineffable (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), Milton Quarterly 45.3 (2011).

Professional Conferences and Presentations

  • "Dividing Cusanus: Reading Nicholas of Cusa in Early Modern England." International Congress on Medieval Studies Kalamazoo, MI (May 10, 2012).
  • “Between Sola Scriptura and Arcana Verba: Ineffability and Textuality in Seventeenth-Century England.” The Bible in the Seventeenth Century: The Authorised Version Quatercentenary (1611-2011) York, U.K. (July 7, 2011).
  • “Reading Teresa de Avila in the Seventeenth Century.” Hispanic Cultural Institute Norman, Oklahoma (November 9, 2010).
  • “From Mystical to Baroque: Teresa de Avila and her English Followers.” Tierra Tinta Conference University of Oklahoma (October 8, 2010).
  • “Right Belief and Right Knowledge: Epistemological Subversion in The Cloud of Unknowing.” International Medieval Congress Leeds, U.K. (July 13, 2009).
  • Panel Chair: “Heretical Cultures in England, II: Chaucer and Intellectual Culture.” International Medieval Congress Leeds, U.K. (July 13, 2009).
  • “Mental Picturing and the Medieval Similitudo: Prolegomenon toward a New Approach to Chaucer and the Nominalist Questions.” McNair Research Conference University of North Texas (February 19, 2008).