McKenna Rose

I specialize in Early Modern Drama, Ecocriticism, and Digital Pedagogy. My current book project, Object Ecology in Early Modern Drama, examines the ways in which the English theater, with its storehouses of properties, garments, and machinery, stages the environmental consequences of the early modern vogue for collection and display. The natural rarities assembled in cabinets of curiosity, the proliferation of movables across all ranks of the domestic sphere, and the rise of private and lending libraries provide the historical context in which I argue the rapid increase and subsequent accrual of manufactured objects affected the environment in Renaissance England. Just as Early Modern dramatists Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Thomas Middleton, represent the ways that object collection and disposal affects the environment, the things we collect have caused global climate change. We can look to sixteenth century objects to understand how they are both part of historical ecological systems and often themselves ecological.  In addition to examining the effects of the accrual of goods in my book manuscript, I also pursue the relationship among objects and ecosystems in my teaching and publications in Shakespeare and Early Modern Culture. I have taught courses in Shakespeare, the History of Drama, Early British Literature, and Digital Writing, and also served as the Interim Writing Center Director at Oxford College of Emory University. I am currently teaching community based courses in partnership with Serve Learn Sustain as a recipient of their Course Development Grant.