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My primary research is in premodern eco-studies, especially relating to trees and forests in English literature. I have written two essays on Robin Hood in this vein, one on the “greenwood” setting of medieval Robin Hood tales, the other on a seventeenth-century ballad called “Robin Hood’s Fishing.” I’ve also published three essays on Shakespeare related to plants represented in his plays. My current book project, titled Shakespeare’s Sentient Trees: Plant Embodiment and Temporality, investigates the representation of trees in Shakespeare plays from a critical plant studies perspective. Additionally, I recently published an article that interrogates the relationship of Robin Hood and race in the novel and film adaptation of We Need to Talk About Kevin. I have forthcoming essays about plants in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and community gardening as an experiential learning pedagogy.

I enjoy teaching, particularly in the areas of literature, rhetoric, and writing. I have taught courses in Shakespeare, early modern literature, British literature, American literature, environmental literature, critical theory, first-year rhetoric/composition, and technical writing. I often use service-learning pedagogy in my courses to foster active and experiential learning for students and connect the classroom to the larger community outside of the university campus. In various literature and rhet/comp courses, I have successfully incorporated a community garden-based service learning program, receiving a Faculty Fellowship on Sustainability in the Curriculum (for $5,000) from the Institute for Sustainability and Global Impact at the University of Texas-Arlington to develop this program. I’m in the process of planning a community garden project at my current institution.

Within my fields of scholarly interest, I have presented at numerous conferences, including the Modern Language Association (MLA), the Shakespeare Association of America (SAA), the International Congress on Medieval Studies (Kalamazoo), the International Medieval Congress (Leeds, England), the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE), and the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts (SLSA). I’ve also been involved with the organization of conferences. In 2019, I helped organize a symposium on critical plant studies at the University of Texas-Arlington, titled “Radical Cultures: Lively Vegetation in Literary Studies,” which featured a plenary talk by Dr. Vin Nardizzi (University of British Columbia). I also took part in the first annual workshop meeting of the Texas Ecocritics Network (TEN), hosted by Dr. Heather Houser at the University of Texas-Austin.

Feel free to look around the site and contact me if you have any questions. My main blog is titled SylvanSomeThings, on which I occasionally write short posts related to various aspects of my research, teaching, and general topics of interest within the humanities and academia. You can check out the News section for upcoming talks or presentations I’ll be giving.

Thanks for stopping by!

Email: jason.hogue@tamuk.edu Twitter: @drytares1

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