Laura L. Runge

Professor of English

CONTACT

Office: CPR 358-C
Phone: 813-974-9496
Email

• Curriculum Vitae
• Academica.edu
• ResearchGate

EDUCATION

• Ph.D., Emory University, English with certificate in Women’s Studies
• MA Emory University, English
• BA University of Rochester, English and Women’s Studies

BIO

For over 30 years I have been feminist scholar of Restoration and Eighteenth-Century British Literature focusing on women writers, gender and language. I have been involved in literature and technology from the beginning of my work, and recently I published Digital Literary Analysis of the Works of Aphra Behn.  My earlier research involved a span of writers from mid-seventeenth century through early nineteenth century.  More recently I have focused on Aphra Behn and use the data I created for the book.  I am working on Behn and Music, with several smaller essays moving toward a book.  My December 2023 article “‘But First Let’s Have a Dance’– Music in Aphra Behn’s Plays,” Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research, Volume 35 (Nov/Dec 2023): 27-51 won Honorable Mention for Annibel Jenkins Award in Theatre and Performance Studies 2025 (SEASECS). 

I believe in open-access scholarship and try to make my research accessible through the USF Libraries Digital Commons – Faculty Publications and other research sites.

I am also founding editor and continuing editor-in-chief for the online open-access journal ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts 1640-1830. It publishes twice a year in scholarship, pedagogy, digital humanities, reviews and conversations.

I have directed nine dissertations to completion.  My students have written dissertations mostly, but not exclusively, on eighteenth-century subjects including ecocritical readings of women’s poetry, Behn’s The Rover in contemporary productions directed by women, food and women’s travel writing, the animal-human continuum, animal speech in eighteenth-century literature, and animals in Florida literature.  I have served on over thirty PhD committees and twenty-five masters degree committees.

REcent PUBLICATIONS

• Quantitative Literary Analysis of the Works of Aphra Behn: Words of Passion (Anthem Press, 2023) Open Accss with data hosted by the USF Scholar Commons: DOI: https://doi.org/10.5038/qla.data
• “‘Em and the Apostrophe of Elision in Aphra Behn’s Prose.” In Elizabeth Bonapfel; Mark Faulkner; John Lennard; Jeffrey Gutierrez (eds.) A History of Punctuation in English Literature. Cambridge: CUP, forthcoming.
• “‘But First Let’s Have a Dance’– Music in Aphra Behn’s Plays,” Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research, Volume 35 (Nov/Dec 2023): 27-51. Honorable Mention for Annibel Jenkins Award in Theatre and Performance Studies 2025 (SEASECS)
• Circuit of Apollo: Eighteenth-century Women’s Tributes to Women, co-edited with Jessica L. Cook, University of Delaware Press, 2019
• “Austen and Computation 2.0,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language, special issue: What’s Next for Jane Austen, ed. Janine Barchas and Devoney Looser, December 2019: 397-415.