Richard Rambuss is the Henry Merritt Wriston Professor of English. He is a native of Buffalo NY, and earned his BA at Amherst and PhD at Johns Hopkins. He joined the faculty at Brown in 2011 and served as English Department chair from 2018-2026.
Profesor Rambuss specializes in early modern literature and culture as well as film. Kubrick's Men, his most recent book, was published by Fordham. It treats Kubrick's body of work as a sustained reflection on men and masculinity in strange or extreme circumstances. His other books are The English Poems of Richard Crashaw (Minnesota, 2014); Closet Devotions (Duke, 1998); and Spenser's Secret Career (Cambridge, 1993; paperback 2006). He is now at work on a book about the surprising role of Renaissance literature, especially Milton, Shakespeare, and Spenser, in New Orleans Mardi Gras culture.
Prior to arriving at Brown, Professor Rambuss taught for fifteen years at Emory University, where he also served as Chair of the English Department. In 2009 he was the Visiting Hudson Strode Professor of Early Modern Studies at the University of Alabama.
