Dr. Margo Kolenda-Mason (she/her)  is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Central Arkansas, where she teaches Early Modern English Literature. Before coming to UCA, she earned her M.A. and PhD in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan and held a visiting position at Hendrix College. She received a B.A. at Brandeis University where she triple-majored in English, Hispanic Studies, and Comparative Literature.

Her research interests lie at the intersection of economics and literature. Her current book project, Fruitless Work: Queer Labor in Early Modern English Literature argues that sixteenth century writers used rhetorics and representations of fruitless labor to understand marginalized, precarious, and hard-to-categorize forms of work such as botching, apprenticeship, and writing. She has published in Renaissance Drama and has forthcoming pieces in Arthuriana and the Bloomsbury Cultural History of Solitude in the Early Modern Age.  

She has presented her research at the Shakespeare Association of America, Renaissance Society of America, The International Congress on Medieval Studies, and The International Medieval Congress, as well as through other conferences and in forums at various levels. In addition to her experience teaching in writing and literature classrooms, she has a background in academic advising and writing center work.