Board of Directors

The Southeastern Renaissance Conference (SRC)

2023-2024 Board of Directors

Ward Risvold, President

Ward Risvold teaches business communication at Georgia College & State University. He has taught at Nazarbayev University and the University of California, San Diego. He currently serves as the director of the Shakespeare Foundation of Spain and is the editor of our journal, Renaissance Papers. He co-edited Harry Berger Jr.’s latest book, Couch City: Socrates against Simonides (Fordham University Press, 2021). His own research focuses on the social networks in England’s early book trade. His most recent publications include a co-authored study of 17th century printer, Anne Maxwell, and a study of playwright, Ben Jonson’s relationship to the Jacobean marketplace. Ward is currently analyzing the social networks that informed the work of the 17th century economist and founding member of the Royal Society, Sir William Petty. You can read more about Dr. Risvold on his bio page.

Jonathan Shelley, Vice President

Jonathan Shelley is an 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 in prison. He is also an instructor for the Rochester Education Justice Initiative and teaches accredited college courses to incarcerated persons in Western New York. His scholarship has appeared in Renaissance Papers, SEL: Studies in English Literature, and The WAC Journal.

Melissa J. Rack, Immediate Past President & Director of Digital Media

Melissa J. Rack is Assistant Professor of English at the University of South Carolina, Salkehatchie. She received her MA and PhD from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her area of expertise is genre theory, the intertextuality of form in lyric poetry, the Neo-Latin context for English Renaissance poetry, and the influence and reception of Catullus in English verse. Her current research project is a comparative study of the influence of Catullus on the shorter lyric poetry of Edmund Spenser. You can read more about Dr. Rack on her bio page.

Eric Dunnum, Treasurer

Eric Dunnum is Associate Professor at Campbell University. His first monograph, Unruly Audiences, explored how London riots influenced early modern dramaturgy. His past work has appeared in Shakespeare, Ben Jonson Journal, and Comparative Drama. He is currently working on a manuscript for Palgrave on Thomas Middleton entitled, Temporality and Alienation in the Works of Thomas Middleton.

Jesse Russell, Secretary

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. You can read more about Dr. Roberts on her bio page.

Lisandra Estevez, Renaissance Papers Co-Editor

Lisandra Estevez is Associate Professor of and Chair of Art History at Winston-Salem State University. She received her MA and PhD from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick. Her research interests include early modern Iberian and Latin American art and visual culture. Her current work focuses on artistic interactions in the early modern transatlantic world, polychromy in early modern European art, and the intersection of race and religion in early modern Iberian and Latin American art.

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. You can read more about Dr. Pearce on his bio page.

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.