Caroline Bicks

Professor

Neville Hall, Room 407

Orono, Maine 04469-5752 U.S.A.

Office hours – by appointment

Bio

I’m a scholar of Shakespeare and early modern studies, with a special focus on drama, gender, and the history of science. I studied Renaissance poetry at Harvard as an undergraduate and received my Phd in English Literature from Stanford. I was tenured at Boston College in 2008 and began summer teaching at the Bread Loaf School of English soon after that. In 2017, I came to the University of Maine as the inaugural Stephen E. King Chair in Literature. The Chair was endowed by the Harold Alfond Foundation; its mission is to support the public humanities, a challenge that I’ve embraced by bringing award-winning fiction writers, journalists, educators, and activists to speak and work with different Maine communities; supporting student research and internship work; and giving talks around the state. In recent years, thanks to the generosity of Stephen and Tabitha King, I’ve spent time in King’s private Archive researching early drafts of his most iconic works. This has led to my developing interest in horror fiction, and to my most recent book, Monsters in the Archives.

The uniquely public-facing nature of my position as King Chair complements the creative nonfiction pieces I have delivered to popular audiences over the years across various media platforms, including the Modern Love column for the New York Times, NPR’s “All Things Considered,” and the show Afterbirth, in which I had the opportunity to perform alongside Andrew McCarthy, Andrea Martin, and other professional actors. In April 2023, I launched the Webby-Award honored Everyday Shakespeare podcast with my friend and fellow Shakespearean Michelle Ephraim. This medium allows us to use our experience as educators and entertainers to deliver fresh, funny insights into how Shakespeare’s world connects to ours.

Courses Taught:

ENG 253 Shakespeare: Selected Plays

ENG 271 The Act of Interpretation

ENG 353 Shakespeare and the English Renaissance

ENG 402 Life Writing

ENG 429 American Ghost Stories

ENG 429 Convents, Covens, and Crusaders: Reading Communities of Women

HON 340 / ENG 429 Horror and Humanity

ENG 471 Sex, Gender, and the Body in Early Modern England

ENG 553 Graduate Seminar in Early Modern Drama

ENG 554 Graduate Seminar in Early Modern Lyric Poetry

Publications:

Books

Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King (Hogarth/PRH, 2026).
Cognition and Girlhood in Shakespeare’s World: Rethinking Female Adolescence (Cambridge UP, 2021).
Midwiving Subjects in Shakespeare’s World (Ashgate, 2003; Routledge, 2016).
. Shakespeare, Not Stirred: Cocktails for your Everyday Dramas, co-authored with Michelle Ephraim (Perigee/PRH, 2015).
The History of British Women’s Writing, 1500-1610. Volume 2 of The History of British Women’s Writing. Co-edited, and Introduction co-authored with Jennifer Summit (Palgrave, 2010).

Articles

“Mary Ward and the Figuring of Female Networks,” in Representing Women: Portraiture, Power and Visual Culture in the British Literary Renaissance, ed. Yasmin Arshad and Chris Laoutaris. London: Arden, 2025)

“Fear of the Queen’s Speed: Trauma and Departure in The Winter’s Tale. Humanities: 11 (2022): 156.

“Incited Minds: Rethinking Early Modern Girls,” Shakespeare Studies 44 (2016): 180-202.

“Repeat Performances: Mary Ward’s Girls on the International Stage,” Renaissance Drama 44.2 (2016): 201-215.

“ ‘Making the Stage my Profession’: Girlhood and Performance in Mary “Perdita” Robinson’s Memoirs,” Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 9.1 (2014): 1-19.

“Producing Girls in Mary Ward’s Convent Schools,” in Gender and Early Modern Constructions of Childhood, ed. Naomi Miller and Naomi Yavneh. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012. 139-156.

“Gender and Sexuality in Middleton’s Plays,” in Thomas Middleton in Context, ed. Suzanne Gossett. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2011. 263-270.

“Instructional Performances: Ophelia and the Staging of History,” in Performance and Pedagogy on the Early Modern Stage, ed. Kathryn McPherson and Katherine Moncrief. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011. 205-216.

“Staging the Jesuitess in A Game at Chess,” Studies in English Literature 49.2 (2009): 463-484.

“Stones Like Women’s Paps: Revising Gender in Jane Sharp’s Midwives Book,” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 7.2 (2007): 1-27.

“Planned Parenthood: Minding the Quick Woman in All’s Well,” Modern Philology 103.3 (2006): 299-331.

“Midwiving Virility in Early Modern England.” Maternal Measures: Figuring Caregivers in the Early Modern Period. Ed. Naomi Miller and Naomi Yavneh. Women and Gender in the Early Modern World. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000. 49-64.

“Backsliding at Ephesus: Shakespeare’s Diana and the Churching of Women.” Pericles: Critical Essays. Ed. David Skeele. New York: Garland, 2000. 205-227.

Department of English

Caroline Bicks