NEH awards grant to UW-Madison professor

A leading scholar of Renaissance English literature at UW–Madison will examine lyric poetry in the early modern period under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

The $40,000 award, announced in December, was one of 167 given to scholars across the country to support scholarly research, curriculum development programs, museum and library programs in the humanities, and public broadcasting presentations.

In Heather Dubrow’s case, the grant will support a new book that will re-examine three questions.

“What is lyric poetry? Why and how does it assume distinctive forms in the English Renaissance? And what do the answers to those first two questions demonstrate about genre and gender, early modern culture, and our own academic culture? To address those problems, I hope to offer new approaches to critical dilemmas, such as whether lyric is internalized meditation or social interaction, and how lyric interacts with narrative,” Dubrow says.

Dubrow has been a member of the Department of English faculty since 1990. Specializing in Shakespeare and lyric poetry in the 16th and 17th centuries, she is the author of five books, a co-edited collection and two chapbooks of her own poetry. In addition, for the past eight years Dubrow has been her department’s job placement officer, helping students with every stage of their employment applications. She also serves as one of the faculty associated with the university’s Chadbourne Residential College. In 2001, Dubrow was awarded a Distinguished Teaching Award for her work with both undergraduate and graduate students. She is preparing an edition of Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” for the New Riverside Shakespeare.

Dubrow’s award is one of two that the NEH made to Wisconsin institutions of higher learning. The other, an “Extending the Reach” grant, went to the La Courte Oreilles Ojibwe Community College in the amount of $25,800 for the development of a two-year Ojibwe language program.