Anthony Welch specializes in Renaissance literature and culture. His scholarly research focuses on John Milton, seventeenth-century poetry and poetics, and the European epic tradition. His book The Renaissance Epic and the Oral Past shows how early modern epic poets struggled to make sense of ancient oral poetry—from Homeric Greece to Celtic Britain—and how those struggles led to new models of authorship and changing theories about the origins of civilization. His forthcoming survey, The Epic: A Very Short Introduction, explores practices of epic storytelling around the world, from the Western epic canon to the traditional heroic poetry of Asia, Africa, and the Near East. Dr. Welch’s current research explores how European epic poetry and other inherited literary forms were adapted to tell early modern stories of global exploration, intercultural encounter, and colonial conquest. 

Dr. Welch teaches courses on Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, and the literature of early modern Europe. Recent graduate courses include Renaissance Epic: Spenser and Milton; Fictions of Authority in Seventeenth-Century England; and Seventeenth-Century Poetry: Critical Approaches and Controversies. He is a recipient of the UT Alumni Association Outstanding Teacher Award, the Carroll Distinguished Teaching Professorship, and the College Convocation Advising Award.