B.A., 2002, M.A., 2005, Ph.D., 2011, The Ohio State University

On sabbatical Winter/May 2026

Dr. Rachel Ellen Clark has taught British literature at Wartburg since 2011. Her research focuses on early modern English literature—Shakespeare and his contemporaries—with special interests in disability studies and the history of the book. In 2018, she was selected as a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Scholar and participated in the summer institute “Global Histories of Disability” at Gallaudet University in Washington, DC. She presents regularly at the annual conferences of the Shakespeare Association of America and the Sixteenth Century Society. Her current book project, Witchcraft and Disability in the Early Modern Atlantic World, examines how witchcraft itself created discourses of ability, disability, and hyperability that intersect with the racialized, gendered, and (a)sexual bodies of witches—ultimately helping to form notions of ableism that persist today.

At Wartburg, Dr. Clark teaches THRIVE seminars and Honors courses, as well as a range of courses in the English major. She has served as Honors Director (2018-2025) and faculty-in-residence (2020-2024). You will often see her around campus with her own animal familiar, a sweet poodle named Jellybean. Please say hello! Jellybean would love to become your best friend, and Dr. Clark would love to chat.

When she is not teaching or preventing Jellybean from eating mysterious objects, Dr. Clark enjoys drawing and painting, playing the piano, making pottery, reading books for fun (!), and watching British detective shows. 

Courses Currently or Regularly Taught

• SEM 100 First Year Seminar: Fantasy U.
• HON 200 Second Year Seminar: The Gothic
• EN 115 College Composition: Growing Up Queer
• EN 153 Introduction to Disability Studies
• EN 155 Introduction to Film
• EN 201 Cornerstones of British Literature
• EN 202 Contemporary British Literature and Film
• EN 233 Magic and Witchcraft in British Literature
• EN 261 The British Isles: Literary Locations (May term travel course to the UK and/or Ireland)
• EN 316 Shakespeare
• EN 331 Structure of English

Works in Progress

• “Reproductive Care and Stage Witches in Early Modern England.” Shakespeare and Care: Disability and Community in Early Modern England, ed. Susan L. Anderson and Joseph Maddocks. Under consideration with University of Edinburgh Press.
• “Disability with Gender: Monstrosity and Magic.” The Oxford Handbook of Disability and Literatures in English: 1500-1700, ed. Elizabeth Bearden and Katherine Schaap Williams. Under contract with Oxford University Press.
• “Disabled Witches and Asexual Erotics on the Early Modern Stage.” Early Modern Asexualities, ed. Liza Blake, Catherine Clifford, and Aley O’Mara. Under contract with Cornell University Press.
• Witchcraft and Disability in the Early Modern Atlantic World, monograph in progress.

Selected Publications

• With Lucy C. Barnhouse. “Le moine et la sorcière (Sorceress, 1987): Church Law and the Witch Trial That Wasn’t.” Law, Justice, and Society in the Medieval World: An Introduction through Film, ed. Esther Liberman Cuenca, M. Christina Bruno, and Anthony Perron. New York: Fordham University Press, 2025.
• “On the Worship of Guinefort the Dog,” from Étienne de Bourbon, On the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit (ca. 1250). Translation from the Latin. Law, Justice, and Society in the Medieval World: An Introduction through Film, ed. Esther Liberman Cuenca, M. Christina Bruno, and Anthony Perron. New York: Fordham University Press, 2025.
• “Azeem and the Witch: Race, Disability, and Medievalisms in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.” Open Library of Humanities 9.1 (June 2023). DOI: https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.9796
• “‘Lame Doings’: Amputation, Impotence, and Community in The Shoemaker’s Holidayand A Larum for London.” Amputation in Literature and Film: Artificial Limbs, Prosthetic Relations, and the Semiotics of ‘Loss’, eds. Erik Grayson and Maren Scheurer. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021.
• “The Anti-Brexit Cymbeline.” Early Modern Culture 12, Article 26, 2017.
• “John Webster and the Height of Jacobean Tragedy.” Seventeenth Century English Literature, ed. Kirilka Stavreva. Gale Researcher (peer-reviewed online reference source), 2017.
• “The Merry Wives of Windsor Q1 (1602).” Shakespeare Documented. Folger Shakespeare Library online exhibition, 2017.
• “The Merry Wives of Windsor Q2 (1619).” Shakespeare Documented. Folger Shakespeare Library online exhibition, 2017.
• “Rebellion in Arcadia: Caroline Anti-Militarism in Dramatic Adaptations of Sidney.” James Shirley and Early Modern Theatre: New Critical Perspectives, ed. Barbara Ravelhofer. New York: Routledge, 2017.