Image courtesy of Merton College Library, Oxford

Professor and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society
Editor of Reformation

Office: Keezell 218

Spring 2024 Office Hours:
MW 10:00 - 11:00am and by appointment

View Dr. Rankin's curriculum vitae

Specialization:
English literature, 1475-1660, with emphasis on the English Renaissance and Reformation, Shakespeare, Tudor non-dramatic literature, and the History of the Book

Secondary Fields: late-Medieval literature, manuscript studies, and iconography 

Education: 
Ph.D., English, The Ohio State University, with Certificate in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2007
M.A., English, Ohio University, 2001 
B.S.Ed., summa cum laude, English Education, Ohio University, 1999 

Dr. Rankin regularly teaches and has published widely on Tudor literature, English Reformation literature and culture, and the early English Bible.  He is contributing editor of Sermons at Paul's Cross, 1521-1642 (Oxford, 2017) and co-editor of Henry VIII and His Afterlives: Literature, Politics, and Art (Cambridge, 2009). He is currently completing a new census of surviving copies of the first four editions of John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments of these Latter and Perilous Days, and his critical edition of William Tyndale's The Practice of Prelates (1530) is under contract with Catholic University of America Press. 

He was the Principal Investigator of a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Scholarly Editions and Translations Grant, 2016-19, on “The Independent Works of William Tyndale,” and has co-directed NEH Summer Seminars for College and University Teachers on "Tudor Books and Readers: 1485-1603" and "The Formation and Re-formation of the Book: 1450-1650.” He has held short-term research fellowships at the Newberry Library, the Huntington Library, and the Folger Shakespeare Library, and was Faculty Member in Residence for JMU's Semester in London Program during the autumn of 2013. 

His articles have appeared in Renaissance Quarterly, English Literary Renaissance, Erasmus Studies, the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, The Library, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, Reformation, Studies in English Literature, The Yearbook of English Studies, and The Sixteenth Century Journal. He regularly offers presentations at the Renaissance Society of America's annual meeting, and at the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference. He is a member of the Bibliographical Society and the Renaissance English Text Society.