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Department of English

Stephen Buhler
Professor

Stephen Buhler Photo

Stephen Buhler
109 Andrews Hall
Lincoln, NE 68588-0333
(402)472-1784 (office)
sbuhler1@unl.edu

Degrees and Institutions Granting the Degree

  • California State University, Long Beach, BA
  • University of California, Los Angeles, MA
  • University of California, Los Angeles, PhD

Professional Areas of Specialty

The literary culture of Early Modern England, especially the works of Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton. Literature's connections with philosophy and the performing arts.

Courses Regularly Taught

  • Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton
  • English Authors Before 1800
  • Milton (Poetry, Politics, & Prophecy)
  • Music and Text in the English Renaissance (with Pamela Starr of the UNL School of Music)
  • Renaissance Drama
  • Renaissance Poetry (Romance and Epic)
  • Shakespeare on Screen

Personal Teaching Statement

I regularly ask students to read aloud, recite, enact, or perform passages from literature. In encouraging them to bring the language more vividly to life in their own understandings and for their listeners, I share some of my own contemporary musical settings of early modern poetry. When the students respond in kind--a staged dramatic interpretation, a screenplay adaptation, or even an outdoor rally--it shows their grasp of the material and their engagement with it.

For me, the best part of teaching is learning: when everyone in a class, including the instructor, comes away from the experience knowing more (and more deeply) about the subject. Dialogue with students and with colleagues on campus, throughout the discipline, and across disciplinary lines provides both the inspiration and the environment for effective teaching and constructive research. I've found that work in the humanities especially depends not only upon individual insight and effort but also upon collaboration and conversation.

Selected Publications, Projects, and Awards

  • Shakespeare in the Cinema: Ocular Proof (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002).
  • "Jazz and Shakespeare" in the forthcoming Shakespeare Encyclopedia, ed. Patricia Parker (Greenwood Press, 2009).
  • Adapter, Stage Society production of Shakespeare's Hamlet; Becker Amphitheater, California State University at Fullerton, May 2009.
  • Co-leader, with Mike LoMonico, of Folger Shakespeare Library/UNL English Teaching Shakespeare Institute; 28 teachers from across the U. S. participated (Summer 2008).
  • "Politicizing Macbeth on U. S. Stages: Garson's MacBird! and Greenland's Jungle Rot," in Macbeth: New Critical Essays, ed. Nick Moschovakis (New York: Routledge, 2008).
  • "Musical Shakespeares: Attending to Ophelia, Juliet, and Desdemona," in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Popular Culture, ed. Robert Shaughnessy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
  • Education Director and Co-founder, Flatwater Shakespeare Company. Dramaturg and Text Adviser for productions of Macbeth and Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest (Haymarket Theatre, 2006 and 2009), The Comedy of Errors, Romeo and Juliet, Love's Labor's Lost, King Lear, The Taming of the Shrew, The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Julius Caesar (Swan Theatre 2006-9).  Sound design for The Taming of the Shrew, Richard III, The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Julius Caesar (Swan Theatre 2006-9). 
  • Recipient of the University of Nebraska's Outstanding Teaching and Instructional Creativity Award (OTICA). Member of UNL's Academy of Distinguished Teachers.