Pasquale Toscano

About Pasquale Toscano

I am scholar, teacher, and writer whose public-facing work has appeared in \"The New York Times,\"\"The Atlantic,\" and \"Vox,\" among other publications. A graduate of Washington and Lee University (2016), I earned two master\'s degrees, in English (15••••00) and Classics, from the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, before receiving my PhD in English from Princeton in 2024. My research interests include Milton, disability studies, the (neo)classical epic tradition, Black classicism, and Tudor/Stuart tragedy. Though I write about them less frequently, I\'m likewise a fan of contemporary fiction and musical theater. My scholarship, and creative nonfiction, has either been published or is forthcoming in \"Disability Studies Quarterly,\"\"Reformation,\" the \"Classical Receptions Journal,\"\"SEL,\" and the \"Huntington Library Quarterly,\" while many of my public-facing essays can be found in \"Synapsis: A Health Humanities Journal.\" I was a 20••••24 Porter Ogden Jacobus Fellow, Princeton\'s top honor for graduate students, and with Genelle Gertz won the Harold Grimm Prize from the Sixteenth Century Society in 2022.I\'m currently working on several book projects. My top priority-\"Stand and Wait: Dynamics of Physical Dis/ability in the Greco-Roman Epic Tradition\"-retells the story of epic poetry by showing that disability shaped the genre as both a problem to be solved and a spur to generic innovation in (neo)classical heroic verse. My second book project-\"All Pity Choked: The Falls of Tragedy and the Rise of Renaissance Cure\"-reveals how early modern tragic literature becomes a site for litigating the ethics, efficacy, and affects of \"cure,\" which gained conceptual currency in the Renaissance. Meanwhile, I\'m also co-editing \"Milton and the Network of Disability, Embodiment, and Care Studies\"(exp. 2026, from Edinburgh UP), with Angelica Duran, and writing essays of hybridized creative nonfiction and literary criticism, which I aim eventually to revise into a book.Teaching is likewise important to me. At Vassar, I teach courses on Shakespeare, Milton, early British literature, disability, and the Renaissance. I\'ve co-taught introductory composition as part of the Prison Teaching Initiative and co-designed a new course called \"Bodies and Belonging in Milton\'s Epic Tradition\" with Nigel Smith. In 2024, the Princeton Graduate School acknowledged my efforts with one of its annual Teaching Awards. Outside the classroom, I was an advisor at one of Princeton\'s undergraduate colleges (Whitman) and a frequent mentor for fellowship applicants.

Experience

1. Assistant Professor of English

   Vassar College

   Aug 2024 — Present · Poughkeepsie, NY, US

Education

• Washington and Lee University

  Bachelor's degree, English and Classics

• Princeton University

  Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, English Language and Literature/Letters

  2017 — 2024

• University of Oxford

  Master's degree, Classics

• University of Oxford

  Master's degree, English (1550-1700)