Elspeth Graham
Reader in Early Modern Studies, and Head of English
Research Interests
From my earlier work on seventeenth-century radicalism, I have extended my interest into research on cultural connections and intersections in the early-modern period. I am particularly interested in two related areas: human relations with the environment and with other species who co-exist within culture; and the seriousness of play as a component of the identities of different social and cultural groups. I have published on horses, drama and class relations in the 1630s, and on aristocratic self-writing and identity. Papers I have given on space, movement and changes in the formation of subjectivity form the basis of a large project, A Gadding Humour: Space, Movement and Identity.
Current Projects
Most particularly, however, I am engaged on a long-term project on the cultural and social relationships that inform certain cultural formations related to 'play' in the late sixteenth and seventeenth century. My research for the Shakespeare North Project – which takes the form of extensive archival investigation and a theoretical analysis of issues of inter-regional relationships, social interconnections, and architectural developments – relates to this area of interest and activity. My work has brought me into collaboration with architectural historians, historians, literary historians and drama specialists from a number of British and overseas universities. I am currently writing a monograph on the Elizabethan Playhouse in Prescot,.
Publications (Selected)
Book Chapters
"Intersubjectivity, Intertextuality and Form in the Self-Writings of Margaret Cavendish", in Michelle M. Dowd & Julie A. Eckerle (eds.), Genre and Women's Life Writing in Early Modern England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006)
"Reading, Writing and Riding Horses in Early Modern England: James Shirley's Hyde Park (1632) and Gervase Markham's Cavelarice (1607)", in Erica Fudge, ed., Renaissance Beasts: of Animals, Humans, and Other Wonderful Creatures (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2003)
'"Oppression makes a wise man mad": the suffering of the self in autobiographical tradition’ in Henk Dragsta, Sheila Otway & Helen Wilcox (eds), Betraying Our Selves: Literary Representations of the Self in Early-Modern Autobiography (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000 )
External Professional Activities
Reader/referee for The Seventeenth Century, the AHRC, Manchester University Press and Routledge.
Postgraduate Teaching and Supervision
I have supervised PhDs on Magic Realism Andrew Marvell, and masculinity and the environment.
Teaching: Undergraduate
I teach various courses on early modern and contemporary literature and cultural history.
