Image courtesy of Merton College Library, Oxford

Spring 2025 Office Hours:
Tu/Th 1 - 2PM, and by appointment

View Dr. Rankin's curriculum vitae

Specialization:
English literature, 1475-1660, with emphasis on the English Renaissance and Reformation, Shakespeare, Tudor non-dramatic literature, and the History of the Book

Secondary Fields: late-Medieval literature, manuscript studies, and iconography 

Education: 
Ph.D., English, The Ohio State University, with Certificate in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2007
M.A., English, Ohio University, 2001 
B.S.Ed., summa cum laude, English Education, Ohio University, 1999 

Dr. Rankin regulary teaches and has published widely on Tudor literature, English Reformation literature and culture, and the early English Bible. He is the co-editor of Henry VIII and His Afterlives: Literature, Politics, and Art (Cambridge, 2009) and The Elizabethan Catholic Underground: Clandestine Printing and Scribal Subversion in the English Counter-Reformation (Brill, 2025). He is also contributing editor of Sermons at Paul's Cross, 1521-1642 (OUP, 2017). His current projects include an edition of William Tyndale's the Practyse of Prelates, under contract with Catholic University of America Press; and edition of the reformer John Bale's pamphlet controversy with James Cancellar for the Renaissance English Text Society; a study of the early reception of Thomas More's English Works; and a census and reception study of all surviving institutional copies of the John Day editions of Foxe's "Book of Martyrs."

He was the Principal Investigator of a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Scholarly Editions and Translations Grant, 2016-19, on “The Independent Works of William Tyndale,” and has directed or co-directed four NEH Summer Seminars for College and University Teachers on printing during the Reformation. He has held short-term research fellowships at the Newberry Library, the Huntington Library, and the Folger Shakespeare Library, and was twice Faculty Member in Residence for JMU's Semester in London Program. 

His articles have appeared in Renaissance Quarterly, English Literary Renaissance, Erasmus Studies, the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, The Library, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, Reformation, Studies in English Literature, The Yearbook of English Studies, and The Sixteenth Century Journal. He regularly offers presentations at the Renaissance Society of America's annual meeting, and at the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference. He is a member of the Bibliographical Society and the Renaissance English Text Society.