Michael Witmore Bio

Michael has been interested in the ways in which "spontaneity" serves as a source of knowledge and rhetorical effects in the culture of the English Renaissance. His book, Culture of Accidents: Unexpected Knowledges in Early Modern England (co-winner of Perkins Prize for Narrative, 2003), explored the ways in which narrative depictions of "accidental events" allowed them to serve as moments of discovery around the turn of the seventeenth century. He is now finishing a book called Pretty Creatures: Children and the Agency of Fiction in the English Renaissance. He is also writing a short book called Shakespearean Metaphysics that explores Shakespeare's "dramaturgical monism" in three plays (King Lear, Twelfth Night, The Tempest), using as reference points the philosophies of Spinoza, Bergson and Whitehead. He is an organizer of the Pittsburgh Consortium for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley.

	*Michael Witmore, Associate Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies*
	Michael has been interested in the ways in which "spontaneity" serves as a source of knowledge and rhetorical effects in the culture of the English Renaissance. His book, Culture of Accidents: Unexpected Knowledges in Early Modern England (co-winner of Perkins Prize for Narrative, 2003), explored the ways in which narrative depictions of "accidental events" allowed them to serve as moments of discovery around the turn of the seventeenth century. He is now finishing a book called Pretty Creatures: Children and the Agency of Fiction in the English Renaissance. He is also writing a short book called Shakespearean Metaphysics that explores Shakespeare's "dramaturgical monism" in three plays (King Lear, Twelfth Night, The Tempest), using as reference points the philosophies of Spinoza, Bergson and Whitehead. He is an organizer of the Pittsburgh Consortium for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley.