Bach, Rebecca Ann

PERSONAL:

Education: University of Pennsylvania, Ph.D., 1994.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of English, University of Alabama, HB 221, 1530 3rd Ave. S., Birmingham, AL 35249-1260.

CAREER:

University of Alabama, Birmingham, currently associate professor of English and director of undergraduate studies.

WRITINGS:

Colonial Transformations: The Cultural Production of the New Atlantic World, 1580-1640, Palgrave (New York, NY), 2000.

Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature before Heterosexuality, Palgrave (New York, NY), 2007.

Contributor to journals, including Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 and Medieval & Renaissance Drama in English, Renaissance Drama, and Journal of Narrative Theory.

SIDELIGHTS:

Rebecca Ann Bach is a scholar of English literature whose research has included the works of the early modern period, Shakespeare, feminist theory and the history of sexuality, and colonial and postcolonial theory. Her debut scholarly book, Colonial Transformations: The Cultural Production of the New Atlantic World, 1580-1640, is about how England's interactions with other cultures as it began colonizing other lands affected cultural identity and literature on both the parts of colonizer and the colonized. "She argues that England's encounters with Ireland, Virginia, and Bermuda were central to what it meant to be English in the period," reported Mark Fortier in the Renaissance Quarterly, "and that consequently it is misguided, for example, to separate English literary and cultural history from early North American literary and cultural history." Because the author focuses on only a sixty-year period, however, Modern Language Review critic Philip Schwyzer felt that Bach was guilty of "certain omissions and distortions" because she does not address earlier interactions between such people as the Welsh and English. Nevertheless, Schwyzer asserted: "The great strength of this book lies in Bach's willingness to enter generic and linguistic territories from which like-minded critics have tended to shy away." Zubeda Jalalzai, writing in Early American Literature also offered an opinion on what is best about the book: "The greatest strength of Colonial Transformations is in Bach's insistence on the relationship between various colonial projects and English literary and political identities as well as her excellent literary readings of early modern dramatic texts." Jalalzai added: "While Colonial Transformations is an important contribution to transatlantic studies and attests to the significance of such work in the early modern period, it also reveals the difficulty of coordinating such diverse literary and historical contexts. Bach's attention to the colonial forces at play in the metropole through English drama, however, may be her best contribution to these important studies."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Early American Literature, spring, 2003, Zubeda Jalalzai, review of Colonial Transformations: The Cultural Production of the New Atlantic World, 1580-1640, p. 325.

Modern Language Review, January, 2003, Philip Schwyzer, review of Colonial Transformations, pp. 173-174.

Renaissance Quarterly, spring, 2002, Mark Fortier, review of Colonial Transformations, p. 321.