UMass Renaissance Scholar Accepts Joint Appointment

University of Massachusetts at Amherst professor Mark Shell will join the faculty next fall with a joint appointment as a full professor in English and Comparative Literature, Shell confirmed yesterday.

Shell, who was a visiting professor at Harvard in the spring of 1989, said he plans to teach four courses here next year.

In the English Department, Shell will teach an undergraduate course on language and nationalism and a graduate level course on Shakespeare, he said.

The Shakespeare course will focus on issues of kinship and revenge in Hamlet, Measure for Measure and The Merchant of Venice, Shell said. He said the class will differ from Professor of English Marjorie Garber's Core course on Shakespeare.

In the Comparative Literature Department, Shell said, he will teach a graduate level course called "Fiction of Kinship in the Renaissance" and an undergraduate course on money, language and thought.

"My work tends to be broadly interdisciplinary, bringing together disparate fields" Shell said.

When he spent a semester here in 1989, Shell taught two Comparative Literature courses on Kinship and the European Renaissance.

Shell, who is interested in the interdisciplinary study of economics and literature, said he hopes some undergraduates will take his graduate level courses next year. "Harvard has extraordinarily gifted and hardworking stu- dents," he said.

Shell was attracted to Harvard by the qualityof its undergraduates and graduates, he said. Hewas also drawn here because of the quality of thefaculty and the "breadth of Harvard's intellectualconcerns," he said.

Shell, 44, received his Ph.D. from Yale and agraduate degree from Trinity College in Cambridge.As an undergraduate, he attended StanfordUniversity and McGill University.

He is the author of The Economics ofLiterature, and has written threebooks--Children of the Earth, Elizabeth's Glassand Art and Money--that will be published thisfall, he said. Shell is also the recipient of aMacArthur Foundation grant

Shell was attracted to Harvard by the qualityof its undergraduates and graduates, he said. Hewas also drawn here because of the quality of thefaculty and the "breadth of Harvard's intellectualconcerns," he said.

Shell, 44, received his Ph.D. from Yale and agraduate degree from Trinity College in Cambridge.As an undergraduate, he attended StanfordUniversity and McGill University.

He is the author of The Economics ofLiterature, and has written threebooks--Children of the Earth, Elizabeth's Glassand Art and Money--that will be published thisfall, he said. Shell is also the recipient of aMacArthur Foundation grant