Sharon Achinstein

Sharon Achinstein is the Sir William Osler Professor of English at Johns Hopkins University's Krieger School of Arts & Sciences. Her work bridges early modern literature with political communication, focusing on toleration, religious dissent, and gender participation. She explores form and ideology in Milton's writings and their relation to the emerging public sphere. Her recent research examines marriage's literary, legal, and theological dimensions, engaging debates on secularism and human rights in early modernity.

Her research has been supported by ACLS, NEH, Folger, British Academy, and UK AHRC fellowships. She has published monographs like *Milton and the Revolutionary Reader* (1994) and *Literature and Dissent in Milton’s England* (2003), as well as edited collections on Milton and gender. Her current projects include an Oxford edition of Milton's divorce tracts.

Achinstein’s scholarship interrogates the economic and institutional influences on Renaissance literary studies, tracing how post-war U.S. academic pressures shaped disciplinary frameworks. Her work on Milton spans poetry, political thought, and interdisciplinary dialogues with theology, law, and global history.