About Orlando Reade
Orlando Reade is Assistant Professor (Teaching and Research) in English (Writing & Literature) at Northeastern University London. His teaching specialisms include Academic Writing, Creative Writing, and English Literature. He has a BA in English Literature from St. John’s College, Cambridge, and a PhD from Princeton University. He also writes creative non-fiction and art criticism.
Qualifications:
PhD English Literature (Princeton University)
MA Renaissance Studies (University of London)
BA English Literature (University of Cambridge)
Orlando Reade's Research
My research looks at Renaissance literature and its afterlives across the modern age. I’m especially interested in the role of poetry in times of political turmoil. My PhD focused on three poets living during the English Civil War period (1640-1660) – Katherine Philips, Henry Vaughan, and Thomas Traherne – and I’ve published several articles on their work. Recently, I’ve also become interested in the role of literature in the struggle to abolish slavery and in the contemporary movement to abolish prisons.
My first book, What in Me is Dark: The Revolutionary Afterlife of Paradise Lost, looks at twelve readers of John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, including Thomas Jefferson, George Eliot, Hannah Arendt, and Malcolm X. It is forthcoming in November 2024 from Jonathan Cape in the UK and Astra House in the USA. I’ve also written an introduction for a Vintage Classics edition of Paradise Lost, published to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the poem’s publication in its final form.
I also write creative non-fiction and art criticism. My writings have appeared in The Guardian, The White Review, Tank, and Frieze. I was a contributing editor to The White Review and co-founded Effects, a journal of contemporary art and aesthetics.
Academic Publications
‘Paradise Lost and the Politics of Abolition’ (forthcoming, 2025)
‘An Abolitionist Turns to Milton at the Outbreak of the American Civil War’ (forthcoming, 2025)
‘On Poetic Radiance: An Exchange of Poems Between Katherine Philips and Henry Vaughan’, in Marcher Metaphysicals, edited by Joseph Sterrett and Helen Wilcox (forthcoming, 2024)
‘‘Fortune is a Mistresse’: Figures of Fortune in English Renaissance Poetry’, in Fate and Fortune in the Renaissance, edited by Ovanes Akoyapan (Brill, 2021)
Recent Non-Academic Publications
‘Rebel Verses’, The Literary Review, July 2024
‘Greta Gerwig’s Paradise Lost’, Literary Hub (2023)
‘Ode to Olaudah Equiano’, Chapter Gallery, Cardiff (2022)
‘Vampire Minimalism: An Aesthetic of Gentrification’, Effects (2022)
Municipal Dusk (Earthbound Press, 2020)
More information can be found on my website:
Orlando Reade's Teaching
At Northeastern University London, Dr Reade teaches Academic Writing, Creative Writing, and English. In the past, he has taught at Princeton University, the NJ-STEP prison education program, and the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research.