Steven Robert Swarbrick

Assc Professor

Weissman School of Arts and Sciences

Department: English

Areas of expertise: English Renaissance literature, critical theory, queer theory, psychoanalysis, ecocriticism

Email Address: steven.swarbrick@baruch.cuny.edu

Education

Ph.D., English, Brown University Providence RI

B.A., English, San Francisco State University

SemesterCourse PrefixCourse NumberCourse Name
Spring 2024ENG2800Great Works of Literature I
Spring 2024ENG4140Shakespeare
Spring 2024ENG2800Great Works of Literature I
Fall 2023ENG3010Survey of English Literature I
Fall 2023ENG4140Shakespeare
Fall 2023ENG3010Survey of English Literature I
Spring 2023ENG4140Shakespeare
Fall 2022IDC4050HHon Feit Hum Sem I
Spring 2022ENG2800Great Works of Literature I
Spring 2022ENG2800Great Works of Literature I
Fall 2021ENG2800HHon Great Works of Lit I
Fall 2021ENG4170Milton
Fall 2021ENG2800Great Works of Literature I
Summer 2021ENG3010Survey of English Literature I
Spring 2021ENG2800Great Works of Literature I
Spring 2021ENG3010Survey of English Literature I
Spring 2021ENG5001Independent Study English II
Fall 2020ENG4140Shakespeare
Fall 2020ENG2800Great Works of Literature I
Spring 2020ENG3010Survey of English Literature I
Spring 2020ENG2800Great Works of Literature I
Spring 2019ENG4170Milton
Spring 2019ENG6002HHonors English II
Fall 2018ENG2800Great Works of Literature I
Fall 2018ENG6001HHonors-English I
Fall 2018ENG4160Renaissance Poetry
Summer 2018ENG3010Survey of English Literature I
Spring 2018ENG3010Survey of English Literature I
Spring 2018ENG2800Great Works of Literature I
Fall 2017ENG2800Great Works of Literature I
Fall 2017ENG4170Milton

Books

Swarbrick, S. R. (2026). Divest: An Essay on Political Masochism. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press.

Swarbrick, S. R. (2025). The Earth Is Evil. Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press.

Swarbrick, S. R., & Tremblay, J. (2024). Negative Life: The Cinema of Extinction. Evanston, IL, Northwestern University Press.

Swarbrick, S. (2023). The Environmental Unconscious: Ecological Poetics from Spenser to Milton. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press.

Swarbrick, S. R. Unknowing Sex: Shakespeare against the Historicists. In Progress.

Journal Articles

(2025). "Hamlet in Valhalla: History, White Supremacy, and Trauma in The Northman". Exemplaria: Medieval, Early Modern, Theory, 37(1). 78–98.

(2023). “Epicures in Kissing: Asexuality in Venus and Adonis". differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 34(2). 84-108.

(2023). "The Weather in Sedgwick". Critical Inquiry, 49(2). 165-184.

Swarbrick, S., & Tremblay, J. (2021). "Destructive Environmentalism: The Queer Impossibility of First Reformed". Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture, 43(1). 3–30.

Swarbrick, S. (2021). "The Violence of the Frame: Image, Animal, Interval in Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac". Cultural Critique, 113. 131–161.

Swarbrick, S., & Raber, K. (2020). "Introduction: Renaissance Posthumanism and Its Afterlives". Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts, 62(3). 313-328.

Swarbrick, S. (2019). "Nature's Queer Negativity: Between Barad and Deleuze". Postmodern Culture, 29(2). 1–34.

Swarbrick, S. (2019). "Idiot Science for a Blue Humanities: Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors and Deleuze's Mad Cogito". Journal for Cultural Research, 23(1). 15-32.

Swarbrick, S. (2019). "Object-Oriented Disability: The Prosthetic Image in Paradise Lost". JNT: Journal of Narrative Theory, 49(3). 323-350.

Swarbrick, S. (2018). "In Anthropocene Air: Deleuze's Encounter with Shakespeare". Early Modern Culture, 13. 103–114.

Swarbrick, S. (2017). "Tempestuous Life: Ralegh’s Ocean in Ruins". Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts , 59(4). 539-563.

Swarbrick, S. (2016). "Shakespeare’s Blush, or ‘the Animal’ in Othello". Exemplaria: A Journal of Theory in Medieval and Renaissance Studies , 28(1). 70-85.

Swarbrick, S. (2016). "Unworking Milton: Steps to a Georgics of the Mind". postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies , 7(1). 120-146.

Swarbrick, S. (2015). "The Life Aquatic: Liquid Poetics and the Discourse of Friendship in The Faerie Queene". Spenser Studies, 29. 229–253.

Book Chapters

Swarbrick, S. (2023). "The Clamor of Things: Moffett’s Gnats, Spenser’s Complaints". In Botelho, K., & Campana, J. (Eds.), Lesser Living Creatures: Insect Life in the Renaissance (pp. 77-95). University Park, PA. Penn State University Press.

Swarbrick, S. (2022). "Nature". In Stratton, M. (Ed.), The Routledge Guide to Politics and Literature in English New York. Routledge.

Swarbrick, S. (2020). "On Eating, the Animal That Therefore I Am: Race and Animal Rites in Titus Andronicus". In Dugan, H., & Raber, K. (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Shakespeare and Animals (pp. 256-269). New York. Routledge.

Swarbrick, S. (2019). "Dancing with Perdita: The Choreography of Lost Time in The Winter’s Tale". In McCulloch, L., & Shaw , B. (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Dance (pp. 197-216). New York. Oxford University Press.

Swarbrick, S. (2018). "Milton’s Queer Earth: A Geology of Exhausted Life". In Orvis, D. (Ed.), Queer Milton (pp. 255-291). New York. Palgrave Macmillan.

"Death and Birth: Negative Life and Ecological Extinction". Working with the Negative: Critique at the End of the World

Other Scholarly Works

Swarbrick, S. R., & Tremblay, J. (2026). "Splitting (A Dialogue)". Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture.

Swarbrick, S. R. (2023). "Destituent Ecology". Alienocene: Journal of the First Outernational.

https://alienocene.com/2023/10/03/destituent-ecology/

Swarbrick, S. R. (2022). "The Lost D". Parapraxis Magazine.

https://www.parapraxismagazine.com/articles/the-lost-d

Swarbrick, S., & Raber, K. (2020). Renaissance Posthumanism and Its Afterlives [special issue of Criticism]. 62(3),

Swarbrick, S. (2017). "Materialism without Matter: Deleuze".

http://criticalposthumanism.net/deleuze-gilles/

Reviews

Swarbrick, S. (2020,January 1). Anne Barton, The Shakespearean Forest. Shakespeare Quarterly.

Swarbrick, S. (2015,January 1). "Philosophy’s Rarefied Air: On Peden’s Spinoza Contra Phenomenology". Theory and Event.

Swarbrick, S. (2014,January 1). "Raphael Lyne, Shakespeare, Rhetoric and Cognition". The Shakespeare Newsletter.

Swarbrick, S. (2014,January 1). "Reading with the Grain: On Vin Nardizzi’s Wooden Os: Shakespeare’s Theatres and England’s Trees". Upstart: A Journal of English Renaissance Studies .

Swarbrick, S. (2013,January 1). "Joanna Picciotto, Labors of Innocence in Early Modern England". Andrew Marvell Studies.