Greensboro College Professor Sheila J. Nayar Publishes Book on Technology’s Impact on Literature
GREENSBORO, N.C. – Sheila J. Nayar, a professor of English, Communication and Media Studies at Greensboro College, has published a book examining the effects of technology on early-modern literature.
“Renaissance Responses to Technological Change,” published by Palgrave Macmillan, examines how three 16th-century innovations – gunpowder, the printing press and the magnetic compass – affected not only literature but also cultural and social structures.
Ultimately, Nayar writes, literature did not just react to print, powder and compass but also actually developed new ways of seeing, knowing, and being in the world.
Reviewer Thomas J. Misa, Professor of the History of Technology at the University of Minnesota, called the book “one of the finest and most sophisticated studies of literature and technology in the past two decades.”
Nayar has published three other books, as well as numerous scholarly articles in such journals as Journal of the American Academy of Religion; PMLA, the journal of the Modern Language Association of America; and Studies in Philology.
Nayar holds a B.A. from Concordia University, an M.F.A. from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She joined the Greensboro College faculty in 1999.
Greensboro College provides a liberal arts education grounded in the traditions of the United Methodist Church and fosters the intellectual, social, and, spiritual development of all students while supporting their individual needs.
Founded in 1838 and located in downtown Greensboro, the college enrolls about 1,000 students from 29 states and territories, the District of Columbia, and seven foreign countries in its undergraduate liberal-arts program and six master’s degree programs. In addition to rigorous academics and a well-supported Honors program, the school features a 17-sport NCAA Division III athletic program and dozens of service and recreational opportunities. Learn more at www.greensboro.edu.
Think critically. Act justly. Live faithfully.
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