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BioTanya Schmidt Morstein is a Lecturer for Structured Liberal Education (SLE). She graduated from Santa Clara University with a BA in English and minors in Classical Studies and Religious Studies, and she earned her MA and PhD in English from New York University in 2022. From 2022-23, Tanya held an appointment as a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow in The College Core Curriculum at NYU, where she was recognized with the university-wide prize for Outstanding Teaching. Tanya has taught a range of writing and humanities courses such as on Shakespeare, Austen, and utopian fiction.

Tanya specializes in the literature and culture of the English Renaissance, and her research interests include classical reception, women’s writing, and intersections between literature and science. Her work on Spenser was awarded the Spenser Society’s Anne Lake Prescott Graduate Student Conference Paper Prize, and she also served as the graduate student representative on the executive committee for the international Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender. Tanya’s research has been supported by NYU’s Global Research Institute in Florence, the Remarque Institute, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the Huntington Library, among others. She is currently working on a book project about the early modern imagination.