Margaret Ezell

Thirty years ago, Margaret Ezell would never have imagined herself in an academic profession. As an undergraduate, she was a determined pre-law student, but she eventually came to realize that law was not what she wanted to pursue. She earned degrees in English and history instead, and went on to earn her Ph.D. in English at Cambridge University.

Today, Ezell is a professor of English at Texas A&M University and holds the John Paul Abbott Professorship in Liberal Arts. The research that the professorship supports is an attempt to blend history and literature. Ezell is interested in creating a cultural literary history of reading and writing, which she sees as a useful addition to traditional literary studies.

While writing her book, Social Authorship and the Advent of Print, and working on a book in the Oxford History of English Literature series, the professorship was of great help, Ezell says. It allowed her to find the archival material that her research needed, and it also has created an “intellectual environment” in which she could think about the Oxford volume.

Ezell used the funds to hold a symposium that dealt with issues about authors and authorship. By creating a type of environment that stimulates intellectual thinking, Ezell believes she was able to understand what people wanted from this new type of literary history she was creating.