Bono Named Chair of English Department at UB

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Barbara J. Bono, associate professor of English, has been named chair of the University at Buffalo Department of English in the College of Arts and Sciences.

An established scholar of Shakespeare, Elizabethan-Jacobean drama and English Renaissance literature, Bono joined the UB faculty in 1984 following a year as a Mellon fellow at Harvard University.

Her awards and honors include a SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1989 and a Milton Plesur Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1993 from the UB Student Association.

In 1996, she was one of four scholars who taught Shakespeare to secondary teachers from around the country at the National Endowment for the Humanities Teaching Shakespeare Institute held at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. She since has begun an outreach program in local Buffalo high schools employing the dramatic and media-centered techniques presented at the institute.

In 1998, while on sabbatical, she was a guest of The Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah.

Bono published "Literary Transvaluation: From Virgilian Epic to Shakespearean Tragicomedy" in 1984 and has written several scholarly articles for literary journals.

During her tenure at UB, Bono has had an impressive history of departmental and university service. In the English department, she was director of graduate admissions and fellowships from 1985-89, director of the master's program from 1996-99 and served as associate chair from 1993-95. Bono also has served as president of UB's Phi Beta Kappa chapter since 1993. From 1993-97, she served as one of three appointed co-chairs for the university-wide Sesquicentennial Committee.

Her professional affiliations include the Shakespeare Association of America, the Renaissance Society of America and the Modern Languages Association.

She is a graduate of Fordham University and holds a doctorate in English literature from Brown University. Bono lives in Buffalo.