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Firstname
Ross
Lastname
Lerner
School
Subject of Study
Dissertation Title

Framing Fanaticism: Religion, Violence, and the Literature of Self-Annihilation across the Reformation

Fellowship Types
E-mail Address
Undergraduate College
Faculty Advisers

Jeff Dolven, Daniel Heller-Roazen, D. Vance Smith, Nigel Smith

Dissertation Summary

Framing Fanaticism asks how the concept of religious fanaticism was constructed as the enemy of certain kinds of political, religious, and social organizations in the Early Modern period. I develop a genealogy of fanaticism as a conceptual category as it emerged across the Reformation in Germany and England in writers as different as Luther and Hobbes. I also track the responses from many religious thinkers and poets, such as Edmund Spenser, John Donne, and John Milton, who experiment in their writings with forms of devotion and violence that trouble attempts to make fanaticism into the bad other of rational citizenship.

Courses Taught or Assisted

Princeton University
Assistant Instructor, English 200: Intro to English Literature, 1400-1800 (Spring 2011)
Garden State Correctional Facility, NJDOC/Mercer County Community College
Philosophy 200: Intro to Philosophy: Plato, Descartes, Nietzsche (Fall 2011)
English 102: Introduction to Literature: Law and Violence in Literature: Shakespeare, Melville, Douglass, Du Bois, Larsen (Spring 2011)
English 101: Freshman Writing (Fall 2009, Spring 2010, Fall 2010)
Albert C Wagner Correctional Facility, NJDOC/Mercer County Community College)
English 102: Introduction to Western Drama (Spring 2012)
English 101: Freshman Writing (Spring 2010)

Published or Conference Papers

Articles
"Donne's Annihilation" (under review)
Selected Talks
“Samson Agonistes: Fanaticism as Tragedy,” Princeton Center for the Study of Religion (December 2012).
“Hobbes’s Outworks: Biblical Hermeneutics and the Problem of Religious Fanaticism,” American Comparative Literature Association Annual Conference, Providence, RI (March 2012)
“Donne’s Annihilation: Mysticism, Askesis and Martyrdom in Biathanatos and Pseudo-Martyr,” Renaissance Society of America, Washington, DC (March 2012)
“Let my trial be mine own confession”: Penance, Punishment and Proportion in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure,” Folger Shakespeare Library (February 2012)

Other Honors or Grants

Princeton Center for Study of Religion Graduate Research Fellowship
McCosh Teaching Award, Princeton University English Department
Princeton University Center for Human Values Graduate Prize Fellowship

Extracurricular Training

Prison Teaching Initiative

Academic Year