Name Rank Degrees Teaching Interests Office Location Office Phone E-mail

Kevin W. Knott Lecturer B.A., Bridgewater College M.A., The Ohio State University M.A., Miami University of Ohio Ph.D., Indiana University 18th-century British literature and culture Popular culture (esp. video games) Cultural studies and media theory 316 Dunkle Hall 301/687-4696 kwknott@frostburg.edu

Kevin Knott completed his Ph.D. at Indiana University (Bloomington) in November 2011, writing his doctoral thesis on the popular 1760s verse satires of actors and acting entitled The Children of Thespis:  The Moral Economy of Audience and Satire in Eighteenth-Century Theater, 1761-1769.  The dissertation argued that mid-century satirists advanced a moral economy of spectatorship, using the term merit, to discipline the audience’s attention (or inattention in some cases) in the playhouse. 

He continues to study eighteenth-century British literature and history, especially the print culture (theater reviews, celebrity biographies, etc.) of the mid-century London stage, with upcoming projects on eighteenth-century attitudes toward merit and the historical development of the satiric review.  He has also written numerous book reviews and presented papers on video game studies, the history of horror and the paranormal, and role-playing games, with a primary focus on audience reception and cultural history.

At Frostburg State University, he has taught Freshman Composition (English 101), Introduction to Literature (English 150), and Social Sciences Advanced Composition (English 308), and in the past he has worked as an academic style editor and taught courses on rhetoric and the paranormal.