Catherine Nicholson holds a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.Phil. from Cambridge University. She is an English Professor at Yale University. Her research dives into early modern English literature, exploring how it challenges conventional ideas of literary value. Her first book, Uncommon Tongues: Eloquence and Eccentricity in the English Renaissance (University of Pennsylvania Press 2013), examines how sixteenth and seventeenth-century readers viewed the “triumph of English” as an estrangement of their language. Her second book, Reading and Not Reading The Faerie Queene (Princeton University Press 2020), traces the complex, centuries-old reception of Spenser’s work. Currently, she is writing a series of essays on early literacy and early printed books, and she frequently contributes to prominent literary journals.