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About John Yargo

I am a Visiting Assistant Professor at Boston College. I earned my PhD in English from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. My specializations are early modern literature, the environmental humanities, and critical race studies. My dissertation explores early modern representations of environmental catastrophe, and my peer-reviewed articles have been published or are forthcoming in Studies in Philology, the Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, Early Theatre, and Shakespeare Studies.

John Yargo holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His specializations are early modern literature, the environmental humanities, and critical race studies. His dissertation explores early modern representations of environmental catastrophe, including The Tempest, Oroonoko, and the poetry of Milton. He has published in Studies in Philology, The Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, and Shakespeare Studies.

John's website

NBN Episodes hosted by John:

Literary Studies April 30, 2023

The Bard in the Borderlands

An Anthology of Shakespeare Appropriations en la Frontera

Katherine Gillen, Adrianna M. Santos, and Kathryn Vomero Santos

Hosted by John Yargo
First performed in the Milagro Theater of Portland, Oregon in 2014, Olga Sanchez Saltveit’s ¡O Romeo! imagines William Shakespeare, late in his life, writing a play set in Mexico about …
Literary Studies March 19, 2023

Medieval English Manuscripts and Literary Forms

Jessica Brantley

Hosted by John Yargo
Today’s guest is Jessica Brantley, Professor of English at Yale University. Professor Brantley is the author of the previous monograph, Reading in the Wilderness, published by the University of Chicago …
Literary Studies March 10, 2023

Botanical Poetics

Early Modern Plant Books and the Husbandry of Print

Jessica Rosenberg

Hosted by John Yargo
Today’s guest is Jessica Rosenberg, who is the author of a new book titled Botanical Poetics: Early Modern Plant Books and the Husbandry of Print (U Pennsylvania Press, 2022). An …
Literary Studies February 10, 2023

Globalizing Fortune on the Early Modern Stage

Jane Hwang Degenhardt

Hosted by John Yargo
How were understandings of chance, luck, and fortune affected by early capitalist developments such as the global expansion of English trade and colonial exploration? And how could the recognition that …
Literary Studies February 4, 2023

The Ruins Lesson

Meaning and Material in Western Culture

Susan Stewart

Hosted by John Yargo
How have ruins become so valued in Western culture and so central to our art and literature? Covering a vast chronological and geographical range, from ancient Egyptian inscriptions to twentieth-century …
Literary Studies November 28, 2022

Queer Velocities

Time, Sex, and Biopower on the Early Modern Stage

Jennifer Eun-Jung Row

Hosted by John Yargo
In a pathbreaking new book, today’s guest, Jennifer Eun-Jung Row, asks how delay and haste in early modern French theater subverts the temporality of heteronormative politics and sexuality. Professor Row …
Literary Studies November 4, 2022

The Curious Eye

Optics and Imaginative Literature in Seventeenth-Century England

Erin Webster

Hosted by John Yargo
Today’s guest, Erin Webster, is the author of The Curious Eye: Optics and Literature in Early Modern England (Oxford University Press, 2020). A book that casts its attention on the …
Literary Studies October 28, 2022

Vital Strife

Sleep, Insomnia, and the Early Modern Ethics of Care

Benjamin Parris

Hosted by John Yargo
In an exciting new book titled Vital Strife: Sleep, Insomnia, and the Early Modern Ethics of Care (Cornell UP, 2022), Benjamin Parris shows how early modern writing about care and …
Literary Studies October 3, 2022

The Trials of Orpheus

Poetry, Science, and the Early Modern Sublime

Jenny C. Mann

Hosted by John Yargo
Today’s guest is Jenny Mann, who has a new book titled The Trials of Orpheus: Poetry, Science, and the Early Modern Sublime (Princeton University Press, 2021). Jenny is Professor in …
Literary Studies September 20, 2022

Literature and Class

From the Peasants’ Revolt to the French Revolution

Andrew Hadfield

Hosted by John Yargo
Andrew Hadfield is Professor of English at the University of Sussex. Andrew has written widely on topics ranging from class struggle in the Forsyte chronicles, Hamlet and Poland, and early …
Literary Studies August 29, 2022

Early Modern Herbals and the Book Trade

English Stationers and the Commodification of Botany

Sarah Neville

Hosted by John Yargo
Over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, works of botany underwent a radical change in the English book trade. A genre that was once produced in smaller cheaper …
Literary Studies August 26, 2022

Shakespeare on the Shades of Racism

Ruben Espinosa

Hosted by John Yargo
In Shakespeare on the Shades of Racism (Routledge, 2021), Ruben Espinosa explores the works of the early modern dramatist in the context of Trump-era immigration policies, anti-Black police violence, and …
Literary Studies July 29, 2022

Bad Humor

Race and Religious Essentialism in Early Modern England

Kimberly Anne Coles

Hosted by John Yargo
Kimberly Anne Coles is Professor of English at the University of Maryland; her first book, Religion, Reform and Women’s Writing in Early Modern England, was published with Cambridge University Press …
Literary Studies July 19, 2022

Disaffected

The Cultural Politics of Unfeeling in Nineteenth-Century America

Xine Yao

Hosted by John Yargo
What is unfeeling? According to today’s guest, Xine Yao, unfeeling includes “a broad range of affective modes, including withholding, disregard, growing a thick skin, refusing to care, opacity, numbness, dissociation …
Literary Studies July 15, 2022

The Philosopher's Toothache

Embodied Stoicism in Early Modern English Drama

Donovan Sherman

Hosted by John Yargo
In Shakespeare’s comedy Much Ado About Nothing, Leonato says, “I pray thee peace; I will be flesh and blood. / For there was never yet philosopher / That could endure …
Literary Studies July 12, 2022

Spenser and Race

A Discussion with Dennis Austin Britton and Kimberly Anne Coles

Dennis Austin Britton and Kimberly Anne Coles

Hosted by John Yargo
Today’s guests are Dennis Austin Britton and Kimberly Anne Coles who have co-edited a special issue of Spenser Studies in 2021, on “Spenser and Race.” Dennis is Associate Professor of …
Literary Studies July 6, 2022

Joy of the Worm

Suicide and Pleasure in Early Modern English Literature

Drew Daniel

Hosted by John Yargo
Advisory: this episode discusses the literary representation of self-harm and suicide, in particular, how writers such as Shakespeare and Milton often treated the subject in unserious or trivializing ways. In …
Literary Studies June 27, 2022

Ahab Unbound

Melville and the Materialist Turn

Meredith Farmer and Jonathan D. S. Schroeder

Hosted by John Yargo
Today’s guests are Meredith Farmer and Jonathan D.S. Schroeder, the co-editors of a bracing new collection of essays about the figure of Ahab in Melville’s novel Moby-Dick. Meredith is the …
Literary Studies June 27, 2022

Cut/Copy/Paste

Fragments from the History of Bookwork

Whitney Trettien

Hosted by John Yargo
Today’s guest is Whitney Trettien whose book Cut/Copy/Paste: Fragments from the History of Bookwork was published through the University of Minnesota Press in 2022. Trettien is a Professor of English …
Literary Studies June 27, 2022

Citizens and Rulers of the World

The American Child and the Cartographic Pedagogies of Empire

Mahshid Mayar

Hosted by John Yargo
In this episode of New Books in Literary Studies, John Yargo spoke with Mahshid Mayar about how children’s puzzles and schoolbooks at the turn of the 20th century helped shape …
Literary Studies June 7, 2022

A Newly Discovered Essay by Fredrick Douglass

"Slavery" (1894-1895)

Leslie Leonard

Hosted by John Yargo
Today’s guest is Leslie Leonard, who received their doctorate in American Studies and 19th C. American Literature from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Their dissertation, The Burdens and Blessings of …
Literary Studies May 20, 2022

How to Do Things with Dead People

History, Technology, and Temporality from Shakespeare to Warhol

Alice Dailey

Hosted by John Yargo
Alice Dailey’s How to Do Things with Dead People: History, Technology, and Temporality from Shakespeare to Warhol (Cornell University Press, 2022) is an exploration of Shakespeare’s chronicle plays through the …