Dr. Reginald A. Wilburn is an associate professor of English and former associate dean for academic affairs for the College of Liberal Arts at the University of New Hampshire.  In addition to serving in leadership positions for UNH's Postdoctoral Diversity Innovations Scholars' Program, the "Advancing Academic Leaders" and the summer "Writing" Academies, Wilburn teaches with specialties in African American literature and culture, Milton, and intertextuality studies. Additional teaching emphases include drama, gender, jazz and black music studies. His monograph, Preaching the Gospel of Black Revolt: Appropriating Milton in Early African American Literature, was published by Duquesne University Press in 2014. This monograph is the first work of literary criticism to theorize African Americans' subversive receptions of John Milton, England's epic poet of liberty. The book examines Miltonic presence in the works of diverse writers from Phillis Wheatley and Frederick Douglass, to Frances Harper, Anna Julia Cooper, and Sutton E. Griggs.

 

A former U.S. Marine and alumnus of the Institute for the Recruitment of Teachers where he served as faculty and curriculum coordinator, Wilburn takes enormous pride in teaching the art of critical thinking, reading, and writing through the "beautiful science" of literary study. Providing students a "premium education," Wilburn embraces a pedagogy of love steeped in academic rigor and standards of excellence. Additionally, he is a recipient of two UNH teaching awards and two scholarly awards from the College Language Association and the Milton Society of America.  He mentors students in the Office of Multicultural Student Affairs and has lectured graduate students as a featured speaker for the Folger Institute/Folger Shakespeare Library. He also sang the National Anthem at several UNH Commencement exercises, most notably before U. S. Presidents, George H. W. Bush and William Jefferson Clinton in 2007.

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Presently, he is completing several manuscripts for publication in peer-reviewed journals in addition to working on a second book project devoted to African Americans' continued remastery of Milton in contemporary literature and culture. For these contemporary writers and performers, Wilburn contends, Milton and the English language continue to matter in times when liberty is the theme and freedom a right to be won, protected, preached, and embodied.

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Education

• Ph.D., English, University of Connecticut

• M.A., English, University of Connecticut

• B.A., English, University of the District of Columbia

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Research Interests

• Gender studies

• Literature and African American studies

• Milton and intertextuality studies

• Pedagogy

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Courses Taught

• ENGL 401: First-Year Writing

• ENGL 549: In the Groove: African American Music as Literature

• ENGL 935: Sem/Studies: "To Hell With Milton in African American Literature"

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