Snapshot

Mark Z. Muggli, the current department head, likes biking but adores walking to work every day, if possible taking the three-mile route along the Upper Iowa River.  A PhD in Renaissance drama from the University of Minnesota, he has published on dramatists William Shakespeare, Philip Massinger, and Ben Jonson, as well as the American novelist Joan Didion.  Mark primarily teaches Shakespeare in Performance, doing his own cutting of one of the plays down to a 60-minute version and teaching his students how to stage the play as it was originally performed.  As part of an NEH summer seminar, he was lucky enough to play the ghost of Hamlet’s father on London’s Globe Theatre stage.  Passionate about walking, he has taught a course in “Walking Books” and led study abroad courses that involved substantial hiking in England and Greece, co-led with his wife and colleague, Carol Gilbertson.

Research Interests

My teaching and research now focus on the English Renaissance (especially Shakespeare and the drama) and news writing (especially the origins of the English newspaper and modern literary journalism). My long-term interest in theatre was stimulated by a 2004 NEH Seminar on Shakespearean staging that included a two-week experience at the recreated London Globe. Since then I’ve acted in a Luther production, directed Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, and Much Ado About Nothing and written a play which has had three public readings. I also have a long-standing interest in factual writing, including news writing, personal essay, and travel writing.

Over the years I’ve gained much from extended travel (in Europe, China, and Central America) and from seven separate years studying, teaching, and researching in other places (Munich, Germany; Bogota, Colombia; Boston, Massachusetts; Durham, England; Austin, Texas; Santa Fe, New Mexico; Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Nottingham, England).

Thoughts on Teaching

Although gifted teachers and students may individually produce some striking results, I believe that a group of committed teachers and students working together are more likely to achieve real wisdom. That's why I appreciate being part of the Luther community.

A short sample of my scholarly writing on Ben Jonson:

My essay "Ben Jonson and the Business of News" (Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Spring 1992) studies the treatment of news in the poems, masques, and plays of the great Renaissance writer Ben Jonson. The essay's final paragraph reflects my interest in the wide range of literature:

"News is not the dominant subject of Ben Jonson's art. Nor does Jonson address all the important issues surrounding news reporting: he does not study the intricate relationship beteween reporters and sources; he cannot offer the systematic sociological analysis that has deepened our understanding of the production, partiality, and reception of the news; he does not imagine the many possible literary forms of written news. But he does probe some of the intricate relationships between timeliness, accuracy, truth, power, and wisdom. Jonson's serious, twenty-year anatomy of the infant news business should in fact encourage modern literary analysts to study more sympathetically the interconnections between journalism and other literature."