Karen Clausen-Brown
Karen Clausen-Brown, a recipient of a Mellon summer stipend, is a Ph.D. candidate in English. Ms. Clausen-Brown graduated from Walla Walla University in 2007 with a triple Bachelor's degree in English, Religion, and Biblical Languages. From 2004-2005, she studied at the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Keble College, Oxford. She has served as managing editor and book review editor for the journal Religion and Literature. Her research interests include political theology, biblical hermeneutics, and the intersection of religion and literature in middle English and early modern texts. She is working on a dissertation that examines understandings of sacred time and history and especially the Sabbath in late seventeenth-century literature, treating such authors as Margaret Fell, Thomas Hobbes, Benedict Spinoza, and John Milton.