Education

• Ph.D. 2002 Vanderbilt University
• M.A. 2000 Vanderbilt University
• M.A. 1998 Pennsylvania State University
• B.A. 1990 English Literature, History, Vanderbilt University

Teaching Interests

• Shakespeare
• Critical Theory
• Early Modern British Literature

Thomas Anderson specializes in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century British literature, especially drama from Shakespeare and his contemporaries. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on Shakespeare and the first half of the British literature survey. His graduate classes have focused on staged violence in Renaissance revenge drama and on the implications of “presentists” critical approaches to the study of Shakespeare.

He is co-editor (with Ryan Netzley) of Acts of Reading: Interpretation, Reading Practices, and the Idea of the Book in John Foxe’s Actes and Monuments, and author of Performing Early Modern Trauma from Shakespeare to Milton, which explores the intersection between cultural memory and history from the Reformation to the regicide in early modern England.

His lastest book—Shakespeare’s Fugitive Politics—examines the relationship among friendship, politics, and sovereignty in King John, Coriolanus, Henry V, Titus, and Julius Caesar. Anderson also teaches in the cursus honorum in the Shackouls Honors College. He served as Director of Undergraduate Studies in the English Department and was the Interim Dean of the MSU Libraries from 2020-2022.

• Shakespeare’s Fugitive Politics (Edinburgh University Press, 2016; Pbk 2018).
• Performing Early Modern Trauma from Shakespeare to Milton (Routledge (Ashgate), 2006; Pbk 2016).  Reviewed in Shakespeare Quarterly, Comparative Drama, Studies in English Literature, Sewanee Review, Review of English Studies, Renaissance Quarterly, College Literature, Shakespeare Survey.
• Acts of Reading: Interpretation, Reading Practices, and the Idea of the Book in John Foxe's Actes and Monuments, co-editor with Ryan Netzley (U of Delaware P, 2010).

• Cute Coriolanus," Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, Special Issue titled "Cute Shakespeare," co-edited with Julia Lupton. 16.2 (2016).
• "'Here's a Strange Alteration!': Hospitality, Friendship, and Sovereignty in Coriolanus," in Shakespeare and Hospitality: Ethics, Politics, and Exchange, Julia Lupton and David Goldstein, eds (Routledge, 2016).​
• "'Ay me, this object kills me!' Julie Taymor's Cinematic Blazon in Titus." In Staging the Blazon in Early Modern Theater (Ashgate, 2013) Pp. 108-122.
• "Surpassing the King's Two Bodies in Marlowe's Edward II: Perpetual Sovereignty and the Specter of the Royal Funeral Effigy." Shakespeare Bulletin. 32.4 (2014): 585-611.​
• "Titus, Broadway, and Disney's Magic Capitalism, Or the Wonderful World of Julie Taymor." College Literature. 40.1 (2013): 66-95. (For Project muse subscription holders: http://muse.jhu.edu.proxy.library.msstate.edu/journals/college_literature/v040/40.1.anderson.html)
• "Rue with a Difference: A Stylistic Analysis of the Rhetoric of Suicide in Hamlet." Co-authored with Scott Crossley. In Language and Style in Shakespeare: New Insights, eds. Jonathan Culpepper and Mireille Ravassat (Continuum Press, 2011) Pp 192-214.
• "Transmuting the Book: A Theory of the Archive and the Search for Origins in Foxe's Actes & Monuments." In Acts of Reading: Interpretation, Reading Practices, and the Idea of the Book in John Foxe's Actes and Monuments. Pp 31-50 (U of Delaware P, 2010).
• "Introduction: Actes of Reading." Co-authored with Ryan Netzley. In Acts of Reading: Interpretation, Reading Practices, and the Idea of the Book in John Foxe's Actes and Monuments. Pp 11-28. (University of Delaware P, 2010).
• "Writing Royal Effigies in the Poetry of Webster and Marvell." 35.3 (2005) English Literary Renaissance. Pp. 507-531.
• "'All Things Visible in Heaven, Or Earth': Reading the Illustrations of the 1688 Edition of Paradise Lost."38.3 (2004) Milton Quarterly. Pp. 157-81. [PDF]
• "Class, Class Consciousness, and the Specter of Marx in Shakespeare's History Plays." Literature Compass. 1.1 (2004). Pp. 1-11.
• "'Legitimation, Name, and All Is Gone': Bastardy and Bureaucracy in Shakespeare's King John." 4.2 (2004). Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies. Pp. 35-61.
• "'What Is Written Shall Be Executed': Nude Contracts and 'Lively Warrants' in Titus Andronicus." 45.3 (2003). Criticism. Pp. 301-321. ( For JSTOR subscription holders: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/criticism/v045/45.3anderson.html)

• Phil and Kari Oldham Outstanding Mentor Award in the College of Arts & Sciences, 2015.
• Mississippi Humanities Council Humanities Teacher Award, 2014.
• Research Fellowship, The Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, University of Tennessee, July, 2013.
• Dean's Eminent Scholar Award from the College of Arts and Sciences, 2011-2012
• Humanities Researcher of the Year, College of Arts & Sciences, Mississippi State University, 2010.
• Outstanding Faculty Award. Shackouls Honors College, MSU.
• Department of English, Award for Outstanding Graduate Student Career. Vanderbilt University.
• Award for Outstanding Teaching, Graduate Instructor in the College of Arts & Science, 2001. Vanderbilt University.

• Book Review Editor, Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies
• Ad Hoc Referee
  • Early Modern Literary Studies
  • Digital Studies/Le champ numérique
  • Shakespeare
  • Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies
  • Early Theater