John Bird

Titles: English Instructor, Complimentary House Counselor, Flagg House, Assistant Coach, Boys Volleyball
Department: English
PA Start Date: 2007

Degrees
AA, De Anza Community College
BA, Columbia
MA, Columbia

Interests
My focus as a scholar is 16th- and 17th-century English poetry, and I am finishing my dissertation on a genre of Elizabethan narrative poetry, the "epyllion," or "miniature epic." As a teacher, I love nothing so much as sitting at the table with students, lingering over a great poem (from any era). Some of my other interests include the relationship between Renaissance humanism, rhetoric, and early empiricism; watching and talking about films, particularly, horror movies; Baroque decorative art; and, when I get the chance, I like to do some writing of my own. Recently, I have become interested in the encounters of Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, a topic that I think is pertinent to our own world and which I hope to develop one day into an elective course.