Eric Rasmussen, Ph.D.

Foundation Professor of English
Eric Rasmussen

Summary

Eric Rasmussen, a foundation professor and chair of the English department at the University of Nevada, Reno has been called "the Robert Langdon of the Shakespearean world" by the Washington Post. Stories about his recent authentication of a newly discovered Shakespeare First Folio were featured in the New York Times, USA Today, the Guardian, NPR, CNN, and the BBC. His narrative account of The Shakespeare Thefts: In Search of the First Folios (Palgrave) was serialized by both the London Sunday Times and Australia's national newspaper, The Age and has been translated into Portuguese and Japanese. He has co-edited the Royal Shakespeare Company's Collaborative Plays by William Shakespeare and Others, The Shakespeare First Folios: A Descriptive Catalogue, and The Royal Shakespeare Company's Complete Works of William Shakespeare. He received the Falstaff Award for Best Shakespearean Book of the Year from PlayShakespeare.com in 2007, 2012 and again in 2013.

Rasmussen is the co-editor of The Norton Anthology of English Renaissance Drama, as well as critical editions for the Arden Shakespeare, Oxford's World's Classics, the Revels Plays and the Malone Society. He is a contributor to The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson (named Book of the Year for 2012 by the Times Literary Supplement) and Shakespeare Beyond Doubt (named Book of the Year for 2013 by both the TLS and History Today).

Rasmussen has served on the board of trustees of the Shakespeare Association of America and the Council of the Malone Society. He is currently a general editor of the MLA's New Variorum Shakespeare and of the Internet Shakespeare Editions Project, and serves as the U.S. representative on the advisory board for the 2016 World Shakespeare Exhibition at the British Library in London.

Education

  • Ph.D., English and American Literature, University of Chicago, 1990
  • M.A., English and American Literature, University of Chicago, 1983
  • B.A., English, Grinnell College, 1982