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Claude J. Summers
Claude J. Summers (born 1944) is an American literary scholar, and the William E. Stirton Professor Emeritus in the Humanities and Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.
A native of Galvez, Louisiana, Claude Summers was the third child of Burg Martin Summers and Theo Coy Causey. He was educated in the public schools of Ascension Parish, graduating from Gonzales High School in 1962. He has long credited two teachers at Gonzales High School—Diana Sevario Welch and Sherry Rushing—for inspiring his interest in academic achievement.
He received his B.A. in 1962 from Louisiana State University, where he majored in English Literature and served as editor of Delta, the undergraduate literary journal. At LSU, he formed a romantic relationship with Ted-Larry Pebworth, with whom he would later collaborate on numerous scholarly articles and books. In 1966, he was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, which enabled him to attend graduate school at the University of Chicago.
At Chicago, he earned his A.M. in 1967 and his Ph.D. in 1970. His doctoral work was supported by a Danforth Fellowship and a University of Chicago Dissertation Fellowship. His dissertation, later published as Christopher Marlowe and the Politics of Power (1974), was directed by David Bevington and Arthur Heiserman. It was one of the first books on Marlowe to focus on homosexuality as a major theme in Marlowe's plays without adopting a condemnatory or moralistic tone.
After receiving his Ph.D. from Chicago in 1970, he accepted an assistant professorship at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, where he taught until his retirement in 2002. He was promoted to associate professor in 1973 and to professor in 1977. He became the William E. Stirton Professor in Humanities in 1989, and was named professor emeritus in 2002.
Ted-Larry Pebworth joined Summers at the University of Michigan-Dearborn in 1971, and together they established the Dearborn campus as a center of Renaissance and seventeenth-century English studies, especially through their biennial Renaissance conferences, which from 1974 until 2000 attracted leading scholars in the field. The series yielded thirteen major collections of essays, most edited by Summers and Pebworth.
In addition to their work together organizing the conference series and editing the collections of essays from them, Summers and Pebworth also collaborated on a number of significant essays on such seventeenth-century figures as John Donne and Henry Vaughan, as well as an edition of the poems of Owen Felltham (1973) and a monograph on Ben Jonson (1979; revised 1999).
Summers's individually authored publications early in his career focused on a wide range of Renaissance and seventeenth-century figures, including Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, Robert Herrick, John Donne, George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, and John Milton, among others; but he soon expanded his range of interests to include modern English and American literature, including especially LGBT literature.
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Claude J. Summers
Claude J. Summers (born 1944) is an American literary scholar, and the William E. Stirton Professor Emeritus in the Humanities and Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.
A native of Galvez, Louisiana, Claude Summers was the third child of Burg Martin Summers and Theo Coy Causey. He was educated in the public schools of Ascension Parish, graduating from Gonzales High School in 1962. He has long credited two teachers at Gonzales High School—Diana Sevario Welch and Sherry Rushing—for inspiring his interest in academic achievement.
He received his B.A. in 1962 from Louisiana State University, where he majored in English Literature and served as editor of Delta, the undergraduate literary journal. At LSU, he formed a romantic relationship with Ted-Larry Pebworth, with whom he would later collaborate on numerous scholarly articles and books. In 1966, he was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, which enabled him to attend graduate school at the University of Chicago.
At Chicago, he earned his A.M. in 1967 and his Ph.D. in 1970. His doctoral work was supported by a Danforth Fellowship and a University of Chicago Dissertation Fellowship. His dissertation, later published as Christopher Marlowe and the Politics of Power (1974), was directed by David Bevington and Arthur Heiserman. It was one of the first books on Marlowe to focus on homosexuality as a major theme in Marlowe's plays without adopting a condemnatory or moralistic tone.
After receiving his Ph.D. from Chicago in 1970, he accepted an assistant professorship at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, where he taught until his retirement in 2002. He was promoted to associate professor in 1973 and to professor in 1977. He became the William E. Stirton Professor in Humanities in 1989, and was named professor emeritus in 2002.
Ted-Larry Pebworth joined Summers at the University of Michigan-Dearborn in 1971, and together they established the Dearborn campus as a center of Renaissance and seventeenth-century English studies, especially through their biennial Renaissance conferences, which from 1974 until 2000 attracted leading scholars in the field. The series yielded thirteen major collections of essays, most edited by Summers and Pebworth.
In addition to their work together organizing the conference series and editing the collections of essays from them, Summers and Pebworth also collaborated on a number of significant essays on such seventeenth-century figures as John Donne and Henry Vaughan, as well as an edition of the poems of Owen Felltham (1973) and a monograph on Ben Jonson (1979; revised 1999).
Summers's individually authored publications early in his career focused on a wide range of Renaissance and seventeenth-century figures, including Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, Robert Herrick, John Donne, George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, and John Milton, among others; but he soon expanded his range of interests to include modern English and American literature, including especially LGBT literature.