Richard Erable, Ph.D.

• Ph.D., Marquette University – Milwaukee, WI
• M.A., Marquette University – Milwaukee, WI
• B.A., California State University – Sacramento, CA

2001

Early modern British literature, Shakespeare, English composition, English grammar

I enjoy taking students to France during Immersive Term not only because French culture was an integral part of my childhood, having been born to French parents who each emigrated to America before the Second World War, but, more importantly, because of the way in which American culture and French culture have been in dialogue with one another since America’s founding. There’s something about the ways in which each culture thinks and feels about the other that not only fascinates my students and me but that has fascinated countless American and French writers and artists before us.

This is a tough question to answer because every course I teach challenges me in a different way; however, if I were forced to choose, I would say Shakespeare is my favorite course to teach because of the way Shakespeare gives voice to his worlds and because of what those imagined worlds say about the real world in which we live.

Honors

Invited Seminar Participant: Transylvania University’s Faculty Seminar on Liberal Education: “Twenty-first Century Liberal Education: A Contested Concept,” Lexington, KY, 2012.
Franklin College Excellence in Teaching Award, 2011.
Invited Seminar Participant: Council of Independent Colleges; Homer Across the Curriculum: The Odyssey; Dr. Gregory Nagy & Dr. Kenny Morrell, Co-Directors, Washington DC, 2007.
Sorority Adviser of the Year, 2006.

Selected Scholarship

“Th’ Assyrians’ king in Peace with foul desire.” Companion to Pre-1600 British Poetry. Ed. Michelle M. Sauer. New York: Facts on File, 2008. 33-34.
“Shakespeare’s Richard II.” The Explicator. 61.2 (2003): 73-75.

My favorite work of literature is King Lear by William Shakespeare because it reminds the audience that human kindness, though all too rare, is our most redemptive trait.