Travis D. Williams

Assistant Professor of English

Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley
M.Phil. University of Oxford
B.A. University of California, Berkeley

Office: 308E Independence Hall
Phone: 401-874-9501
Email: travisdw@gmail.com
Office Hours: Tues 3:00 - 4:00 pm and Thurs 10:00 - 11:00 am

Professor Williams studied English and mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley before starting graduate school at Oxford. There, he concentrated on medieval and Renaissance drama, completed a thesis called “Children in Shakespeare,” and received the Matthew Arnold Memorial Prize for an essay on the English ballad. Returning to Berkeley, he earned a Ph.D. with a dissertation entitled “Ethos and Enargeia: Literary and Rhetorical Strategies of Early Modern Mathematics.” He recently was assistant director for a production of Shakespeare’s As You Like It.

Prior to arriving at the University of Rhode Island in 2006, Professor Williams earned the Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award at the University of California, Berkeley, where his courses ranged across medieval and Renaissance literature, Shakespeare, science and literature, and the literary dystopia. He looks forward to teaching courses on Shakespeare, Jonson, Marlowe, the medieval drama, Renaissance prose, and stage plays about science.

Currently, Professor Williams is working on a book provisionally entitled Shakespeare’s Arithmetic: Literature, Rhetoric, and Early Modern Mathematics. Other topics that may lead to further research by Professor Williams include the gender roles of child characters in English Renaissance drama, and the concept of “conversation,” in classical philosophical and Renaissance humanist dialogues, in early modern drama and the English novel, and in the string quartet.