Board Member: Constance Jordan

Constance Jordan received her B.A. with Honors in English from Barnard College, her M. Phil. from the University of London, and her Ph.D. from Yale, in 1976.  Her field of specialization is Early Modern literature and culture; she also has strong interests in the history of political thought from antiquity to the present, and in twentieth-century American theater.  Before joining the Department of English at Claremont Graduate University in 1988, she taught at Yale, Bryn Mawr College, Northwestern, Columbia, and at the Folger Institute in Washington, DC.  She has been awarded fellowships from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the humanities, the Folger Library, the Huntington Library, and the Newberry Library.  She has served on the editorial board of The Publications of the Modern Language Association, and is currently on the editorial board of Viator. 

Her recent publications include essays on Michel de Montaigne, Shakespeare, and topics in the cultural history of women in the Renaissance; and Renaissance Feminism:  Literary Texts and Political Models (Cornell, 1990); and Shakespeare's Monarchies:  Ruler and Subject in the Romances (Cornell, 1997).  She is editor of sixteenth-century texts in the Longman's Anthology of British Literature, forthcoming from Addison-Wesley Longman in July, 1998.  At Claremont, she teaches courses in early modern literature, including Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Renaissance epic, Humanism, Lyric Poetry from Skelton to Marvell, and American Drama from World War II to the present.  She is Director of the Program in Early Modern Studies at the Claremont Humanities Center.
 

Books:

Shakespeare's Monarchies:  Ruler and Subject in Shakespeare's Romances (Cornell University Press, 1997).

Renaissance Feminism:  Literary Texts and Political Models (Cornell University Press, 1990; rpt. 1992).

Articles:

"Renaissance Women and the Question of Class," in Sexuality and Gender in Early Modern Europe:  Institutions, Texts, Images, ed. James Grantham Turner (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1993), 90-106.

"The Household and the State:  Transformations of the analogy from Aristotle to James I," Modern Language Quarterly, 54, 3 (1993):  307-326.

"Renaissance Women Defending Women:  arguments against patriarchy," in The Revision of the Canon:  Italian Women Writers from the Renaissance to the Present, ed. Maria Marotti (University Park: Penn State University Press, 1996), 55-67.

"Contract in Cymbeline," Renaissance Drama 25 (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1996), 33-58.

"Sexuality and volition in 'Sur des vers de Virgile,'" Montaigne Studies, ed. Marcel Tetel and Dora Polachek (University of Chicago Press, 1997), 65-80.

Review Essay: "The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe" (University of Chicago Press. 1996),  Renaissance Quarterly  51, 8 (1998): 184-92.

On Renaissance Feminism:

"I doubt . . . that anyone could finish this finely argued discussion without agreeing that the pro-woman side of the Renaissance querelle des femmes included many ideas that are key parts of contemporary feminist analysis. Jordan discusses the ideas of writers from Giovanni Boccaccio to the anonymous authors of the pamphlets Hic Mulier and Haec Vir . . . She is . . . able to trace how feminist and antifeminist argument changed and developed over the nearly two hundred and fifty years she surveys and make conclusions as to national differences, for each chapter includes separate sections on Italy, France, and England." - Merry Weisner, American Historical Review 

"Jordan shows lucidly how arguments from cultural relativism affect gender characterization, and how the question of equality relates to social rank and notions of equity; she concludes that Renaissance feminist discourse is pan-European and transgeneric, never producing an 'actionable program,' but succeeding in 'feminizing society.' . . . Jordan has read both her primary and secondary literature with care, and is scrupulous in her contextualization of arguments . . . [An] excellently researched and meticulously argued book." - Ian Maclean, Renaissance Quarterly   

On Shakespeare's Monarchies:

"A remakable achievement, an ambitious and persuasive exposition of political tensions that permeated the culture in which and for which Shakespeare produced his final dramas.  It is the kind of work that will last." -  Russ McDonald, University of North Carolina  

On Longman's Anthology of British Literature:

"There's no question that this anthology has distinctive strengths . . . . First, it is genuinely revisionist, incorporating an impressive amount of new or seldom-anthologized material and skillfully integrating these texts . . . with material one expects.  It is also good to see sustained discussions of women's literary history incorporated into the introductions; these discussions go well beyond simple assertions about 'putting women back into history,' etc.  The concept of 'a new literary geography' also works and makes excellent timely sense.  Second, much of the introductory material is thoughtful and critical... No sleepy literary appreciation here, no tired cultural clichés." - Allen J. Frantzen, Loyala University of Chicago 

Reading Dante:  A study of The Divine Comedy and some of Dante's minor works in light of late medieval theories of knowledge.  Emphasis on the poet's use of language, interpretive strategies, and representation of cosmic and spiritual order with corresponding degrees of chaos and error. A focus on scriptural allusion and classical epic form.  Attention also to Dante's anti theocratic politics in relation to the contemporary struggle between the Papacy and Empire for control of developing resources within cities, states, and nations.

Humanism:  A study of the literature describing ideas of the individual in society from Machiavelli to Behn.  The seminar will focus on the historical and ideological factors that permitted and promoted a conception of the individual (as distinct from community or corporation) in the early modern period.  Special attention will be given to texts that deliberately transform classical models and themes.  Work from writers of prose treatises as well as drama and poetry:  Machiavelli, Erasmus, More, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Spenser, Jonson, Bacon and Aphra Behn.  We will pay special attention to images of "place", and particularly to the theater as a locus producing material fictions.

Epic and Empire:  Virgil, Spenser, and English Colonization. Perspectives on the literature representing imperialist ambition, national identity, and their relation to colonial projects. Readings will focus on the critical responsibilities of the author and the interests of the mercantile subject, and will include Virgil's Aeneid (the foundational narrative of imperialist conquest), Spenser's Faerie Queene (especially Books I, V, VI and VII) and A Present View of Ireland, Shakespeare's Tempest, Aphra Behn's Orinokoo, Bartholome de la Casas' The Spanish Colonie, William Strachey's Travells in Virginia, Thomas Hariot's Brief and True Report of Virginia, histories of the Virginia Colony, 1609, and 1610, selections from the works of John Smith, and extracts from Richard Hakluyt's Voyages of the English Nation.

Romance narrative: Late medieval and early modern texts: Romance form and themes in court culture of the late middle ages to the political pastorals of the Tudor/Stuart period, and the transformation of romance motifs in seventeenth-century drama.  The seminar will focus on the tropes of romance, especially those expressing ideas of time and place, in order to address questions of historiography and narrative form.  Readings will include the Pearl poet, Chaucer, Gascoigne, Sidney, Shakespeare, Elizabeth Cary, and Dryden.

Studies in Satire and Social Critique:  Comedic  expressions of individuals and their communities in various genres:  morality play, mock encomium, picaresque tale, verse letter, sonnet sequence, and the drama.  Attention will be paid to interpretations that depend on both literary tradition and historical setting.  Readings will include works by: Skelton, Erasmus, Wyatt, Sidney, Nashe, Shakespeare, Donne, Jonson, Middleton, the Duchess of Newcastle, Wycherley, and Congreve.

American Drama after WWII: A study of contemporary American theater in light of modernist techniques in representation and staging to include but not be limited to plays by Albee, Guare, Howe, Hwang, Jones, Kushner, Lucas, Mamet, Wasserstein and Wilson.  Readings will begin with O'Neill, Miller, and Williams.  Film versions of plays will be screened prior to class discussion; a class trip to a performance at the Old Globe will be arranged, schedules permitting. About the Early Modern Studies Program at Claremont Graduate University The Program provides students in the Humanities with a comprehensive education in the cultures of the Early Modern period.  Our aim is to build knowledge in multidisciplinary settings and to equip students with the requisite skills to become scholars and teachers, whether their home discipline be English, history, philosophy, religion, or some combination of these. The Program is designed as a concentration within a course of study leading to the Ph.D. degree in one of the Humanities; however, students working toward the MA at CGU are welcome to participate in the Program as are students who have transferred to CGU from other schools.  Students interested in study leading to dual degrees are also encouraged to pursue work in Early Modern Studies.