Lee Morrissey

Lee Morrissey is the Alumni Distinguished Professor in the Department of English at Clemson University's College of Arts and Humanities. He has served as Department Chair (2007-2010, 2013-2017), Interim Associate Dean of the College of Architecture, Arts, and Humanities (2018-2019), and Founding Director of the Clemson Humanities Hub (2016-2021). Affiliated with the Religious Studies program, his career spans teaching, administration, and transatlantic scholarly work.

• Ph.D., English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University (1995)
• M.Phil., English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University (1993)
• M.A., History, Columbia University (1990)
• M.A., English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University (1988)
• A.B., Philosophy and English Literature, Boston College (1986)

Morrissey specializes in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English-language literature, particularly John Milton, early modern religion and politics, and colonial Ireland. His research bridges archipelagic and transatlantic approaches to colonial plantations, re-examining canonical texts through postsecular and intersectional frameworks. He has also contributed to debates on literary criticism's historical development and its democratic implications.

Recent publications analyze colonial architecture's role in material extraction across Ireland and Barbados, Milton's late poems as modernity critiques, and transatlantic literary networks. His work integrates cultural geography, political philosophy, and postcolonial theory, with a focus on British Atlantic world dynamics.

Scientific Awards:

• NEH Creating Humanities Communities Challenge Grant (2017-2020)
• Muriel McCarthy Research Fellowship (2013)
• Fulbright Scholar (2010-2011)
• Allen G. Noble Prize (2016)
• NEH American Rescue Plan Grant (2021)