Happy last day of classes! Many of us have had the chance to take a course with Professor Emily Ransom, but may not know the amazing things she has done in her life. Professor Ransom specializes in the Renaissance. Her previous research has focused on Renaissance devotional complaint poetry, both English and continental, in addition to Thomas More and Northern Humanism, Reformation theology, Catholic recusant literature, constructions of English nationalism (especially in Spenser and Old English antiquarianism), the history of the emotions, theodicy, genre theory, print culture, and Milton’s biblical poetics. Here’s a sneak peak into her life.
First tell me a bit about yourself and anything you’d love the students here to know. Hobbies, family, where were you before UWGB, etc
While many people have “travel lust,” I grew up jealous of people who are “from” somewhere. In college I hated being asked where I was from, and started to answer “the Chicago-Atlanta-Raleigh-Paris-area, thereabouts”—by now I’d have to add Notre Dame and Green Bay to places I’ve lived, and I had shorter opportunities to study in Ireland, England, and Rome, and have family connections in China and India. Despite that, I maintain a (delusional?) image of myself as a country girl from a small town in North Carolina, where I lived in high school and college and where the liminal members of my family always return to the family farm.
I’m an all-around dabbler in the arts. I love watercolor, pen-and-ink, hammered dulcimer, photography, ukulele, singing, cooking, crochet, embroidery, and acting when I can, and I’m often told my handwriting looks like Elvish.
If you would have a superpower, what would it be and why?
Like many of us, I always wanted the powers that were the inverse of what I really have. I wanted invincibility (I’m such a softy!), but instead I have the power of walking through walls (empathy, diplomacy).
What is your favorite piece of literature?
Hmm…I’ll answer that when you tell me who is your favorite child. Seriously, favorite for what?
What is the coolest thing you’ve ever done?
I’m not gonna lie—I’ve lived a pretty cool life. I’ll list a few: witnessed the birth of my nephew on Christmas Day, debated capital punishment in Latin in the Roman Coliseum, traipsed alone through the Irish and Welsh countryside sleeping under the stars, jumped out of a plane, lain of the floor of the Sistine Chapel to look at the ceiling with only four other people in the room, jumped in the Seine downriver from Paris with my little brother, heard Bob Dylan, B. B. King, and Doc Watson in concert, and researched things that have me handling medieval manuscripts and ancient human body parts.
But anything involving being an aunt is really the coolest.
What is your favorite part about UWGB?
The students—never have I been so humbled as I am teaching people who have gone so far under so many pressures and maintain their eagerness for more.
If you were stranded on a deserted island, what three things would you have and why?
Notebook and pen (is that already two?), and The Lord of the Rings—I could never get tired of reading it.
Who has inspired you in your life?
People who serve and people who forgive. I used to be attracted to the movers and shakers of history, but the older I get, the more gentleness brings me to tears.
What is the funniest thing that has happened to you recently?
Anything involving my sister’s German shepherd puppy. Something about puppies make any action comical.
What did you want to be when you were younger?
An explorer. I vividly remember the day when I had the crushing realization (like the scene from The Truman Show) that everywhere had already been discovered. For that reason I went through a brief astronaut stage after that, but it turns out literature is a kind of exploration of its own.
What is your favorite book to movie adaption?
Cry the Beloved Country, with James Earl Jones and Richard Harris—the music and visuals manage to translate the beauty of Paton’s prose across media.