Bringing the Globe to Alabama

The Strode program is a privately endowed program to promote the study of early British literature and culture. The endowment provides for symposia and lectures by distinguished scholars and financial support for graduate study at The University of Alabama in the field of English Renaissance literature.

Hudson Strode served on the University of Alabama faculty from 1916 to 1963. He was a prolific author and celebrated teacher of Shakespeare and of creative writing. The Strode program was endowed by Professor Strode and his wife, Thérèse.

Focus: The Graduate Student

The intellectual work and educational activities sponsored by the Strode Program, from fellowships to lecture series, from the Strode Seminar to summer research awards, converge upon a single focus: the graduate student. We have a lively and talented group of students specializing in English Renaissance literature in preparation for careers in colleges and universities, or for other professional or personal goals. The faculty is committed not only to teaching students but also to mentoring them, fostering a community of future scholars.

Our students have won departmental and college awards for teaching and they have won university-wide fellowships for dissertation research. Topics treated in the theses and dissertations produced by our students are diverse—from readings of Spenser that deploy the theories of Derrida and Lacan to studies of the representation of female sexuality that draw upon seventeenth-century London court records; from adaptations of Shakespeare for teen films to performance criticism of regional and university theatrical productions. Essays written by our students—on Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, on the agency of the letter in Hamlet, on class conflict in Coriolanus, on Leo Africanus and early modern imperialism, and on queer kinship in The Merchant of Venice—have appeared in Early Modern Literary Studies, English Literary History, English Literary Renaissance, Studies in English Literature, and Shakespeare, among other journals and essay collections.

We have an excellent record of placing our PhD graduates in tenure-track professorships. Recent graduates have joined the faculty at Plymouth State University, Mercer University, Piedmont Valley Community College, Xavier University, and Youngstown State University. Strode MA students have matriculated to PhD programs at Emory, Yale, Northwestern, Notre Dame, and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, to name a few. Other Strode MA students have gone on to law school, library school, the Peace Corps, high school teaching, and other opportunities.