Contact Information

• egurney@unca.edu
• 251-6575
• 204 Karpen Hall

Office Hours

• Monday 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
• Wednesday 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
• Note: And by appointment

On leave

I enjoy teaching a wide and eclectic range of literature courses at UNC Asheville. I am especially interested in teaching students how to study premodern literature with careful and joyful attention, and in discovering with students how these older literary forms and traditions become renewed, reformed, and reinvigorated in the work of contemporary writers. In my classes we typically do one or the other, and often both.

My scholarship focuses on the literature and culture of early modern England. Love's Quarrels: Reading Charity in Early Modern England (University of Massachusetts Press, 2018) examines a central irony of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England: how charity, which was supposed to be the "sweet cement" binding the community together, in fact motivated and intensified many of the era's most contentious disputes. Currently I am working on a second project that investigates the presence of vagrancy and roguery in early modern English literature.

Additional scholarly and teaching interests include contemporary poetry and Appalachian literature.

I enjoy spending time with my wife and children, tromping about on beautiful trails, and, when I can, giving the local trout a good laugh.

Education

• Ph.D. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
• B.A. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Teaching

• First Year Seminar: Literary Asheville
• Humanities 214: Medieval and Renaissance World
• Language 120: Foundations of Academic Writing
• Language 361: Poetry Writing Workshop
• Literature 240: Introduction to Literature
• Literature 327: Readings in Poetry
• Literature 334: Western Literature, Ancient to Renaissance
• Literature 484: Rogues, Vagrants, and Early Modern Outsiders
• Literature 484: Classical Remix, Contemporary Literature and Classical Models
• Literature 488: John Milton
• Literature 497/8: Senior Seminar

Publications

Books

Love's Quarrels: Reading Charity in Early Modern England, from the University of Massachusetts Press's Studies in Early Modern Culture Series, 2018.

Scholarly Articles and Essays

• "The Nymph's Reply: Kathryn Stripling Byer and Appalachian Romance," forthcoming in Appalachian Ecocriticism and the Paradox of Place, eds. Laura Wright and Jessica Cory (University of Georgia Press).
• “Contagion and Creative Reflection: Teaching the Early Modern in the Age of Covid-19.” Sixteenth Century Journal 51 (2020): 87-90.
• "Bad Nourishment: John Milton, Ezekiel's Roll, and Prophetic Indigestion." Milton Quarterly 52.1 (2018): 20-36.
• "'But One Ben Jonson Honoured': Ivor Gurney’s Apprenticeship," ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes, and Reviews 30.1 (2017): 42-47.
• “Going Rogue: Spenser and the Vagrants.” Studies in Philology 133.3 (2016): 546-577.
• “Give me mine angle’: Fishing for a Moral in Antony and Cleopatra.” Shakespeare 12:1 (March 2016): 1-19.
• “Spenser’s “May” Eclogue and Charitable Admonition,” Spenser Studies: A Renaissance Poetry Annual 27 (New York: AMS Press, 2012): 193-219.
• “Thomas More and the Problem of Charity,” Renaissance Studies 26.2 (2012): 197-217.
• “A New Allusion to Thomas Browne,” Notes and Queries 257.2 (June 2012), 178-79.

Recent Poems

• “Humpty Dumpty Asks What Happened,” “A Ghazal for Abu al-Qasim Al-Zahrawi,” and “A Visitation.” Contrary Magazine (Spring 2022).
• “The Hoe“ and "Hail Mary.” Rat's Ass Review (Summer 2020).
• "Love IV.” Saint Katherine Review  7.1 (2019): 70.
• "Whiskey" and "Weeding." Appalachian Heritage 46.1 (2018): 88-89.
• "This is Your Head." Broad River Review 49.1 (2017): 90.
• "Ablaze." Still: The Journal 23 (Winter 2017).

Recent Essays

• "Mirror, Mirror." Forthcoming in The Examined Life (2023).
• "An Intruder in My House." Broad River Review (2023)
• "Games of Chance." The Broadkill Review 17.1 (Winter 2023).
• "A Bent Rod and a Brain Tumor." storySouth 54 (Fall 2022).

Reviews and Interviews

• Scriptorium, by Melissa Range. Appalachian Journal 44.1-2 (2017): 182-3.
• That Was Oasis, by Michael McFee. The Carolina Quarterly 62.2 (2012): 102-5.
• "'I'm Most Comfortable with the Eclectic': A Conversation with Stuart Dybek." The Carolina Quarterly 60.1 (2010): 71-82.
• Epistles, by Mark Jarman, and Spill, by Michael Chitwood. The Carolina Quarterly 58.3 (2008): 112-17.