Clarissa Chenovick
Clarissa Chenovick is Assistant Professor of British Renaissance Literature. She received her PhD in English from Fordham University (2017) and holds an M.Phil in Renaissance Literature from the University of Cambridge (2008). At Florida Atlantic, she teaches courses in Renaissance poetry, prose, and drama and contributes to teaching in the health humanities. Dr. Chenovick’s research focuses on the intersections between science, religion, and literature in late medieval and early modern England. Her current book project Reading to Weep: Penitence, Embodied Reading, and Spiritual Cure in England, 1350-1650 examines how pre- and post-Reformation penitential writings use medical language to describe the spiritual and physical cures they offer their readers. This project was awarded a Folger Mellon Long-Term Fellowship in 2019-2020. Other ongoing projects include a digital library project, “Recusant Reading: Browsing the Bookshelves of the Finches of Mawdesley,” in collaboration with Stonyhurst College (Lancashire) and a new project on the erotics of blood piety in early modern England. Her work has appeared in English Literary History, The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, and The Huntington Library Quarterly, and she is a contributor to the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of George Herbert.