Walker, Julia M. 1951-

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Walker, Julia M. 1951-

PERSONAL: Born 1951.

ADDRESSES: Office— Department of English, State University of New York, College at Geneseo, Welles 226, 1 College Cir., Geneseo, NY 14454; fax: 716-245-5181. E-mail— walker@geneseo.edu.

CAREER: State University of New York, College of Geneseo, professor of English.

WRITINGS

NONFICTION

(Editor) Milton and the Idea of Woman, University of Illinois Press (Urbana, IL), 1998.

(Editor) Dissing Elizabeth: Negative Representations of Gloriana, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), 1998.

Medusa’s Mirrors: Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, and the Metamorphosis of the Female Self, University of Delaware Press (Newark, DE), 1998.

The Elizabeth Icon, 1603-2003, Palgrave Macmillan (New York, NY), 2003.

SIDELIGHTS: Julia M. Walker is a professor of English who specializes in the studies of seventeenth-century English author John Milton, representations of Queen Elizabeth I, the poetry of seventeenth-century English metaphysical poet John Donne, the writings of medieval rhetorician Christine de Pizan, and women’s studies in general.

In 1998 Walker wrote Medusa’s Mirrors: Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, and the Metamorphosis of the Female Self. The book outlines how certain male writers, in this case Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton, played off the significance of female characters in literature and history, including Medusa and Cleopatra. Also published in 1998 was Walker’s editing of Dissing Elizabeth: Negative Representations of Gloriana. Here a collection of eleven essays unmask Elizabeth I in a way that shows what she did to make enemies and what they did as a response. The book includes less familiar and canonical sources, such as sermons, popular verse, and visual representations. Anne Shaver, praising the book in the Journal of English and Germanic Philology, called it an “extremely valuable collection of essays.” On the other hand, Christopher Haigh, writing in the English Historical Review commented: “It is just a pity the editor did not write a longer, braver introduction.” Mary Hill Cole noted poor proofreading in Dissing Elizabeth in her article in History: Review of New Books. Cole mentioned, however, that “the collection contains some incisive, subtle essays on the queen and her monarchy.”

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES

PERIODICALS

Contemporary Review, December, 2004, review of The Elizabeth Icon, 1603-2003, p. 377.

English Historical Review, September, 1999, Christopher Haigh, review of Dissing Elizabeth: Negative Representations of Gloriana, p. 977.

History: Review of New Books, winter, 1999, Mary Hill Cole, review of Dissing Elizabeth, p. 69.

History Today, July, 1999, Simon Adams, review of Dissing Elizabeth, p. 59.

Journal of English and Germanic Philology, October, 1999, Anne Shaver, review of Dissing Elizabeth, p. 560.

Modern Language Review, October, 2000, Elizabeth Heale, review of Medusa’s Mirrors: Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, and the Metamorphosis of the Female Self, p. 1066.

Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter, summer, 2000, Alex McNeil, review of Dissing Elizabeth, p. 18.