Faculty: Elizabeth Burow-Flak

 

Professor Burow-Flak specializes in Shakespeare, literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, early modern women writers, history of the book, and new media.

Professor Burow-Flak joined the Valparaiso University English faculty in 1997. One of her favorite features of VU is the opportunity, over the course of her students' time at VU, to see them in multiple venues: in more than one of her classes, for example, in fine arts performances, or at campus events such as lectures and poetry readings.

Professor Burow-Flak believes that all students come to the classroom with valid knowledge and experience, and that her role as professor is to assist them in making connections between what they already know and the new material they are studying.  She states that in discussing and writing about texts, class members not only discover, but also create meaning.

Her teaching specialties include Shakespeare, literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, early modern women writers, history of the book, and new media.  She was drawn to the study of early modern literature because of several developments during that time period: the rise in English as a language of poets, the development of the printing press and the Elizabethan stage, and the emergence of publications by women. She feels a particular passion not only for the works of Shakespeare and Milton, but also of their contemporaries such as Christopher Marlowe, Samuel Daniel, Elizabeth Cary, Lucy Hutchinson, and Ann Bradstreet. Prof. Burow-Flak sees a connection between how writers from this time period viewed the printing press and how our culture considers new media today. She is currently completing a book manuscript on seventeenth-century women writers and print culture. She has also published on the uses of the web and other technologies in English studies.

Professor Burow-Flak serves on a number of university committees, including the Faculty Senate, the Campus, Community, and Policy Committee, the Teaching, Learning, and Technology Roundtable, and the task force for the new building in which the English, History, and Education departments will be housed. She has also served as a mentor in the Lilly Fellows Program in Humanities and the Arts. In addition, she maintains the English department website and has trained students and faculty in web use.

Professor Burow-Flak spends much of her time away from campus bringing up twin boys.  Other interests include restoring her old home and digital video editing.

Professor Burow-Flak earned her B.A. in English and Communications at Augsburg College and her Ph.D. in English at the University of Texas at Austin.