Dr. Angela Balla

Associate Professor, English

Contact

1310 Ben Graves Drive
Morton Hall
Room 264
Huntsville, AL 35899
Campus Map

angela.balla@uah.edu

Biography

My primary research investigates the emergence of the ideal of religious toleration in early modern England well before that ideal became the first freedom under the American Constitution and a hallmark of liberalism globally.  In recent publications, I trace the emergence of this ideal through a literary history indebted to ancient, medieval, and early modern thinking about natural law.  My teaching interests grow out of this research, and include ancient, medieval, and especially early modern texts that explore the workings of conscience, whether pagan, Jewish, or Christian.

Curriculum Vitae


Education

  • Ph.D., English Language and Literature, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, 2003
  • M.A., English Language and Literature, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, 1997
  • B.A., English Literature, University of Arizona, 1996

Expertise

  • Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English poetry, especially that of Milton
  • Shakespeare in performance
  • Early women writers
  • Literature of the Bible
  • Early modern religious history
  • Natural law theory
  • Gender studies

Recent Publications

  • Herbert and Gerson Reconsidered: Mystical Music and the Conciliarist Strain of Natural Law in ‘Providence’” (accepted with revisions by Connotations in September 2023

  • “Prayer as Political Theory: Conscience, Sovereignty, and Natural Law in Donne and Herbert,” in Essays on the Devotional Poetry of John Donne and George Herbert, ed. Russell Hillier and Robert Reeder (University of Delaware Press, 2021), 34-67.

  • “Baconian Investigation and Spiritual Standing in Herbert’s The Temple,” George Herbert Journal 34.1-2 (Fall 2010-Spring 2011): 55-77

  • “Neighbourliness and Toleration in the Work of George Herbert,” Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme 35.2 (Spring 2012): 113-141

  • “Wars of Evidence and Religious Toleration in Milton’s Samson Agonistes,” Milton Quarterly 46.2 (2012): 65-85.