David Landreth, Assistant Professor

Office: 402 Wheeler

Phone: 510-642-2766

Areas of Interest

English Renaissance Literature 1500-1660.

Current Research

I'm working on a book on the circulation of gold and silver coins through the texts and the purses of Renaissance England (from about 1540 to about 1610). Focusing on these small and ubiquitous objects gives me an oblique perspective onto some large and rarified questions, such as the ontology of substances, the materiality of memory and of anachrony, and the mutual inscription of possessions, the people who possess them, and the productive powers of the state. The project began in my interest in the inter-disciplinary rivalry of words and images, as the coin is perhaps the most compressed and most everyday expression of that relation, through the portrait and motto that each one bears. Since then, I've discovered that the work I'm doing brings me in contact with a number of current critical developments, from the self-proclaimed "New Economic Criticism" to the "Thing Theory." My teaching at Berkeley has been split pretty evenly between Shakespeare, on the one hand, and the variety of his contemporaries, on the other--Spenser, Donne, Marlowe, the Jacobean drama--each of whom likewise has a place in the book.

Selected Publications and Papers Delivered

“At Home with Mammon: Money, Matter, and Memory in Book II of The Faerie Queene,” ELH 73.1 (Spring 2006).

“Once More into the Preech: the Merry Wives’ English Pedagogy.” Shakespeare Quarterly 55.4 (Winter 2004): 420-49.

"Washing Hands of Gold: Pilate in Mammon's Cave," paper given, International Spenser Society, MLA, San Francisco, December 2008.

"Favorite Thing: Aesthetic Nostalgia and the Futurity of Exchange," paper for the seminar "Questions of Value," American Comp. Lit. Association, Long Beach, Ca., April 2008.

"The Poetics of Chance: Groats, Angels, and Improvidence in King John," invited workshop, Medieval/ Early Modern Workshop, Stanford University, February 2008.

"Unquestioned Matters of Needful Value, or, Pleasure for Measure," paper given, English Faculty Colloquium, UC Berkeley, April 2007.

"The Poetics of Chance: King John's Lucretius," paper given for the seminar "Shakespeare's Antique Disposition," Shakespeare Association of America, San Diego, April 2007.

"The Perverse Matter of History in King John," paper given, Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies, Chicago, February 2007.

"Dildo-Making and the Wages of Sloth," paper given for the seminar "Domestic/ Civic/ National Middleton," SAA, Philadelphia, April 2006.

"The Tower in Everyday London," paper given, GEMCS, San Antonio, December 2005.

“Gold, Domesticity, and Blood in The Jew of Malta,” paper given, GEMCS, Orlando, Fla., November 2004.

“Pictura Epidemica: Visual Politics in Browne’s Vulgar Errors,” paper given, Copia Conference for Renaissance Studies, Princeton, N.J., April 2004.

“How Much Wit Is a Groatsworth?: the Money-form and Author-function of a Counterfeit Pamphlet,” paper given, GEMCS, Newport Beach, Ca., October 2003.

Office Hours

Wednesday 2:30 to 5:30