Matt Carter, President
Matt Carter is an Associate Professor of English at Clayton State University. He received his PhD from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Theatre, and a Master of Letters in Shakespeare. Dr. Carter is a vibrant and engaging speaker, and his work focuses on theatre history, theory, and practice. His recent publications include “The Faithlessness of English Identity in 1, 2, and 3 Henry VI” in Religions, and ”Shakespeare’s Enemies at the Public Theater” in Boundaries of Violence, which he co-edited with Samantha Dressel. He is currently preparing a book manuscript, Discovering the Kinetic Language of Violence on the Early Modern Stage.
Alexis Culotta, Vice President
Alexis Culotta is Senior Professor of Practice in Art History at Tulane University. Her research focuses on sixteenth-century Rome, exploring how competition, collaboration, and innovation shaped its artists and architecture. Supported by institutions such as the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Renaissance Society of America, and the American Academy in Rome, Alexis has published widely. Her books include Tracing the Visual Language of Raphael’s Circle to 1527 (Brill, 2020) and The Frescoed Façade in Renaissance Roman Visual Culture (Amsterdam Univ. Press, 2025). She is also developing Artistic Network Toolkit (ANT), a digital art history initiative that seeks to democratize access to visualizations of humanities-centered data.
Jonathan Shelley, Immediate Past President
Jonathan Shelley is Assistant Professor of English at St. John Fisher University. He received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests include theories and depictions of friendship in early modern prose, poetry, and drama; the history of technical writing in the Renaissance, specifically forms of dance notation in the 17th and 18th Centuries; ethics pedagogy in the writing classroom; and higher education for incarcerated students. Dr. Shelley also serves as an instructor for the Rochester Education Justice Initiative, teaching accredited college courses to incarcerated students in Western New York. His scholarship has appeared in Renaissance Papers, SEL: Studies in English Literature, and The WAC Journal.
Melissa J. Rack, Director of Digital Media
Melissa J. Rack is an Associate Professor (Professional Track) in the Department of Humanities at Texas A&M International University. She is a scholar of early British literature and former Fellow of the Ludwig-Boltzmann Institute for Neo-Latin Studies in Innsbruck, Austria. Her research focuses on the influence of Catullus on Neo-Latin and vernacular lyric poetry in the Renaissance. She has published articles and book reviews in journals like Studies in Philology, the Sidney Journal, Renaissance Papers, the Spenser Review, and Renaissance Quarterly.
Eric Dunnum, Treasurer
Eric Dunnum is Associate Professor at Campbell University. He received his PhD from Marquette University, and currently teaches courses in Renaissance literature, Milton, and Shakespeare. Dr. Dunnum is a remarkably prolific writer, with a substantial body of published work. He has written numerous articles on early modern drama, Milton, critical theory, and the history of drama. His first book, Unruly Audiences, explored how London riots influenced early modern dramaturgy, and his second book,Temporality and Alienation in the Works of Thomas Middleton was recently published this year (2025) by Palgrave Macmillan.
Jesse Russell, Secretary
Jesse Russell is Associate Professor of English at Georgia Southwestern State University. He is well-known for his work on twentieth-century Catholic political thought, and his insightful analysis of the poetry of Edmund Spenser. Dr. Russell has published articles in academic journals such as Texas Studies in Language and Literature, New Blackfriars, Renaissance and Reformation, and Explorations in Renaissance Culture. He is also the author of The Political Christopher Nolan: Liberalism and the Anglo-American Vision, and his second book, Magic and Queenship in Spenser’s Faerie Queene is forthcoming from Palgrave Macmillan.
Rachel Roberts, Membership Chair
Rachel Roberts is Associate Professor of English at North Greenville University, where she also serves as chair of the English department. She received her MA from Creighton University and her PhD from Baylor University. Her research focuses on early modern women writers, especially writers of history and romance. Her current writing project explores the intersection of religion and feminism in the lives and writing of Anne Dowriche and Elizabeth Cary.
Timothy Pyles, Renaissance Papers, Co-Editor
Bio coming soon!
James Pearce, Renaissance Papers, Co-Editor
James Pearce is Associate Professor of English and Graduate Program Director for the Department of Language and Literature at North Carolina Central University. He received his MA and PhD from Stanford University.
Scott Lucas, Director of Social Media and Marketing & Associate Organization Representative
Scott C. Lucas serves as Professor of English and Department Head in the Department of English, Fine Arts, and Communications at The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina. He received a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, and a PhD from Duke University. He has written numerous articles on sixteenth-century English literature, history, and culture, and he is the author of “A Mirror for Magistrates” and the Politics of the English Reformation (2009) and A Mirror for Magistrates: A Modernized and Annotated Edition (2019). He is currently preparing a critical edition of William Baldwin’s shorter literary writings titled Beware the Cat and Other Literary Works by William Baldwin.