Professor and Chair, English
John Wesley teaches medieval and early modern literature, the Bible as literature, and the history of the English language. His research focuses on the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century reception of Greco-Roman rhetorical theory, and the canon of delivery in particular; his publications in this area have engaged debates about early modern acting styles, methods of literary imitation and authorization, religious devotional practices, and the role of the body in the development of the vernacular. He is currently working on the first-ever critical edition of Richard Mulcaster’s Elementarie (1582), a book of orthography that is an important primary source for historical studies of education, linguistics, and rhetoric. John joined the English faculty in 2011 from the University of Toronto, where he was an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow. He was the 2020 winner of University of Puget Sound’s teaching excellence award.