Seth Swanner
Assistant Professor
English
Biography
Seth Swanner joined UW in 2019 as a Lecturer in the LeaRN Program, where he developed
mentorship opportunities for first-generation college students. In 2023, he joined
the English department as Assistant Professor of early modern literature. His research
interests include seventeenth-century politics, ecocriticism, critical bibliography,
and early modern religion. His current book project, Fringe Natures: Political Upheaval
and the Early Modern Environment from Shakespeare to the Restoration, explores the
intersection between ideas of nature and fringe political concepts such as tyranny,
treason, and anarchy. The book contends that, as with our current moment, the seventeenth
century witnessed political and environmental ruptures that changed the way literature
processed governance, the natural world, and the junctions between.
Education
Ph.D., Northwestern University
M.A., University of Alabama
B.A., Birmingham-Southern College
Recent and Upcoming Courses
Studies in Renaissance Literature: The Pen and the Sword
Introduction to Literary Theory
Literature in English I
Literature in English II
Introduction to English Studies
Selected Publications / Awards
Swanner, Seth. "Horticulture, Colonialism, and Spacetime in Middleton's A Game at
Chess." Studies in English Literature, 2027.
Swanner, Seth. "'The Full-Flowing Stomach': Unwholesome Food, Climate, and Colonialism
in King Lear and Kristian Levring's The King is Alive." Adaptation, 2024, pp. 284-300.
Swanner, Seth. “How to Do Things with Birds: The Radical Politics of Nature’s Speech-Acts
in Macbeth.” Reading the Natural World, edited by Tom Willard, Turnhout, Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies,
2020, pp. 209-227.
Swanner, Seth. “‘The devil that rules i’th’air’: Determinisms of Wind, Star, and State
in John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi.” English Literary History, 2019, pp. 865-893.
Swanner, Seth. “The Beauty of Ho(me)liness: The Unhandsome Sacramentality of Almost-Shape
Poems in George Herbert’s The Temple.” Studies in Philology, 2018, pp. 554-579.
College of Arts and Sciences Extraordinary Merit in Teaching Award
A&S Dean’s Undergraduate Advisory Committee Thumbs Up Award
Promoting Intellectual Engagement (PIE) Award
The University of Wyoming has earned its Research Level 1 (R1) status from the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, placing Wyoming's only four-year university with the top research universities in the United States.