Rebecca Olson, an Oregon native, teaches courses on early modern poetry and drama (c. 1400-1700). Her ongoing research interest is the relationship between literature and the imagination: the ways literary texts encourage readers and playgoers to engage the “mind’s eye” and to think about each other. Her 2025 monograph, Early Modern Reading and the Imagined Self (Edinburgh University Press) examines the ways that sixteenth century printed texts encouraged readers to imagine fellow readers, and suggests ways to expand our sense of imagined textual communities today. She is also the author of Arras Hanging: The Textile That Determined Early Modern Literature and Drama (The University of Delaware Press, 2013), which reveals the significance of Renaissance tapestries in the work of early modern writers. Her work has been published in journals including PMLA, Pedagogy, Word & Image, and Modern Philology, and she oversees a student-edited, free online textbook edition of Romeo and Juliet. 

Teaching/Research Specialization:
Shakespeare, early modern material culture, and word and image studies