Margaret Ezell

Margaret Ezell is a Distinguished Professor at Texas A&M University, affiliated with the College of Liberal Arts. She holds a Ph.D. from Cambridge University (1981) and a B.A. from Wellesley College (1977). Her research focuses on early modern literary culture, particularly the intersection of manuscript and print practices, gender studies, and the history of authorship. She has held numerous editorial roles, including on ELR, the Folger Institute’s Executive Council, and the Philological Quarterly. Ezell’s work challenges traditional literary periodization and emphasizes the recovery of marginalized voices, especially women writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Her awards include the Guggenheim Fellowship (2003-04), ACLS Fellowships (1997, 1989-90), and multiple teaching awards. Her publications, such as Social Authorship and the Advent of Print (1999) and Early English Periodicals and Early Modern Social Media (2024), explore how print and digital media shape authorship and cultural participation. She has also edited key texts like Writing Women’s Literary History (1993) and Anne Killigrew’s Poems (2013).

Ezell’s grants include a NEH-funded project on women’s writing (1988-90) and a College of Arts and Sciences Merger Grant (2022-23). Her research bridges historical and contemporary media, examining how early modern social networks prefigure modern digital communication.