Emily L. King Featured on Connecticut Public Radio’s ‘The Colin McEnroe Show’ The visiting assistant professor of writing and English appeared on the weekday radio program to discuss her expertise on the interplay of honor and vengeance in literature.

By Abby Harlan
December 9, 2025

Emily L. King, a visiting assistant professor of writing and English at Washington and Lee University, was recently featured on “The Colin McEnroe Show,” a weekday program produced by Connecticut Public Radio.

King appears during a 15-minute deliberation of a longer discussion that asks the question,  “What if we were addicted to forgiveness instead of revenge?” Her first book, “Civil Vengeance: Literature, Culture, and Early Modern Revenge” in 2019, examines how early modern literature commonly reflected societal dynamics around honor, vengeance and retribution, and how these qualities relate to one’s culture and identity. Moreover, she asserts the importance of recognizing these power structures and how one’s tendency to resort to revenge under impassioned circumstances can lead to emotional weaponization against other individuals, especially those who are already marginalized.

“If you construct or make someone into a boogeyman, you can predictably treat them in that sort of way,” said King during the segment.

King asserted that, because revenge is well integrated into social relations, individuals consider an act of retribution to be an attempt to communicate difficult emotions. She further argued that revenge, and the passion that lies within the act, can be regarded as a sort of “forced empathy.”

Before joining the W&L faculty in 2023, King was an associate professor of English at Louisiana State University. She holds a Bachelor of Science in microbiology and a Bachelor of Arts in English literature from Kansas State University, along with a Master of Arts and Ph.D. in English from Tufts University.

Founded in 2008, “The Colin McEnroe Show” is hosted by Connecticut journalist and writer Colin McEnroe, who presents weekly themed discussions with guests ranging from academics and comedians to everyday individuals eager to share their stories with a global audience.