Anne McIlhaney teaches courses on early modern British literature, including Shakespearean drama, as well as courses exploring such early modern genres as epic and romance.  She is also currently chair of the department, and is on the Women’s Studies Committee, which she has chaired in the past. 

She received her MA and PhD from the University of Virginia, where she completed her dissertation on 16th- and 17th- century British angling literature.  She has published articles on women anglers in 17th-century British poetry and on Izaak Walton’s Compleat Angler, and has presented her scholarly work on early modern angling at various regional and national academic conferences.  She has also presented public lectures on gender in Shakespeare’s plays at such venues as the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival and the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis.

Her current research interests include Shakespeare, pastoral and georgic literature of the early modern era, and women in literature, and she continues to research and write on gender and angling in the early modern era