Vanita Neelakanta’s principal research and teaching areas include early modern British literature and culture with an emphasis on Milton, Renaissance and Restoration drama, and Reformation theology as well as the cultural legacies of British colonialism. Her book Retelling the Siege of Jerusalem in Early Modern England (Delaware, 2019) focuses on neglected accounts of the Roman destruction of Jerusalem (70. C.E.), and their engagement with religious and political shifts in sixteenth and seventeenth century England. She has also published articles on Milton, on seventeenth-century drama, and on early modern anti-Eucharistic narratives in journals such as ELH, Modern Philology, Philological Quarterly and Studies in Philology. She is currently writing a piece on early modern hospitality and gender in The Merchant of Venice. Her next project titled Imperial Idyll: The Country House in Modern Literature and Culture centers the English country house and its vexed connections to empire and slavery in popular literature, television, and film from the 20th and 21st centuries.
Dr. Neelakanta’s teaching interests are wide-ranging. In addition to courses on Milton, seventeenth-century drama and poetry, and Shakespeare, she teaches classes on science fiction, modern reworkings of the Biblical and classical narratives (ENG), existentialism, and translating Shakespeare from text to stage for the Baccalaureate Honors Program.
Education
- Ph.D. in English, Brandeis University
- M.A. and B.A. in English, Jadavpur University, Calcutta, India
Publications
- Retelling the Siege of Jerusalem in Early Modern England, May 2019, https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/5431