Lara Dodds

Lara Dodds specializes in seventeenth-century literature, with a particular focus on Milton and on early modern women’s writing. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Milton, seventeenth-century British literature, and, occasionally, Shakespeare. In addition, she frequently teaches the first half of the British literature survey and Honors Composition II.

She frequently teaches EN 8103, Research Methods in English, in which she enjoys introducing first year MA students to the challenges of academic research.She is the author of the The Literary Invention of Margaret Cavendish (Duquesne UP, 2013) which describes Cavendish’s debts to English Renaissance Literature, with a particular focus on Cavendish’s critical appropriation of works by Shakespeare, Jonson, Donne, and Milton. She has also published essays on Milton and early modern literature and science.  In her current book project Science Fiction and the Fall, she traces the debts to Milton’s Paradise Lost in 20th and 21st century science fiction.