not without mustard :: current projects

Current Projects

Corpus Approaches to Early Modern Drama

With Hugh Craig (University of Newcastle), I am working on a series of corpus-based computational stylistics studies of early modern drama. These studies will be wide-ranging, detailed, and comprehensive, focusing on the patterns and trends that emerge in genre, repertory, and authorial style.

The project will result in a co-authored book-length study on these topics (proposed to Cambridge University Press), as well as a corpus of richly tagged electronic texts of the plays, made freely available for statistical analysis as part of the Centre for Literary and Linguistic Computing's Intelligent Archive, and as the basis of electronic scholarly editions prepared for the Digital Renaissance Editions.

Beyond the Bestiary

Slated to be my first monograph, Beyond the Bestiary is a study of five animals in early modern England. The book traces textual and visual narratives through Classical Antiquity and late medieval Europe through to early modern England, examining not only how these narratives are transmitted, but how they are also adapted and appropriate to suit changing political, theological, and social contexts. The book builds upon and extends my earlier work on owls and wolves, widening the focus to include eels, flies and fleas (an invertebrate double chapter), and crocodiles. I am proposing the volume to Routledge.

Fair Em

With Kevin Quarmby (Shakespeare's Globe London), I am working on an electronic critical edition of this Elizabethan dramatic romance-comedy for Digital Renaissance Editions. The edition will offer facsimile images and diplomatic transcriptions of early textual witnesses, a modern-spelling text with annotations, collations of textual variants and historical editions, and critical and textual introductions. It will incorporate rich multimedia content, and be the first edition to consult and collate the Canterbury copy of Q1. The edition will also incorporate research undertaken with Hugh Craig (University of Newcastle) on the contested authorship of the play, which has been variously attributed to Robert Greene, Thomas Lodge, Robert Wilson, Edward Alleyn, Anthony Munday, William Shakespeare, and Thomas Kyd.

Scholarly Editions of Early Drama in England

Borne out of my frustruation with using existing bibliographies to chart the production of critical editions of early English drama, Scholarly Editions of Early Drama in England (or SEEDiE for short) is a searchable database of critical editions of late medieval, Renaissance, and Restoration drama written, performed, or printed in England.

Entries are searchable and browseable by play title, playwright(s), editor(s), editorial series, type of edition (whether critical old- or modern-spelling, facsimile, or performance script), publisher (or institution in the case of dissertations), and publication date. Entries will also include links where items are available online, whether born-digital or facsimile. The database will be free to access and use, and subject to peer review for accuracy. Scholars will be able to register for administrative privileges, allowing for the creation of new entries. With SEEDiE, editors may easily compile a bibliography of historical editions for collation, while scholars may map trends in the production of critical editions over time.

Shakespeare, Magic, and the Occult

In this long-term monograph project, I plan to examine the treatment of magic and the occult in Shakespeare's works, the use of stage illusion in theatrical performances of the plays, and the ways in which Shakespeare has been adapted into the patter and props of stage magic shows and appropriated into the discourses of New Age and occult practices. Like Michael Mangan's Performing Dark Arts (Intellect Books, 2007) and Simon During's Modern Enchantments (Harved University Press, 2004), my study will combine cultural history, literary criticism, and performance studies to explore the rich and varied relationships between Shakespeare, magic, and the occult.

Digital Humanities Pedagogy

I'm editing a collection of essays on the practices, principles, and politics of digital humanities pedagogy for the University of Michigan Digital Humanities Series, under the digitalculturebooks imprint of the U-M Press and U-M Library. The essays cover a broad range of topics, from current practices in the undergraduate and graduate classroom to the relative value of teaching and learning digital humanities methodologies and principles, from historical overviews of successful PhD and master's programs to provocative essays about the place of digital humanities in university curriculum. In short: what, when, where, why, and how we should be teaching digital humanities.

Contributors include Olin Bjork, Vicki Callahan, Tanya Clement, Estelle Clements, Richard Cunningham, Diane Favro, Christiane Fritze, Matthew K. Gold, Cathy Moran Hajo, Chris Johanson, Esther Katz, Melanie Kill, Virginia Kuhn, Simon Mahony, Willard McCarty, Elena Pierazzo, Todd Presner, Stephen Ramsay, Malte Rehbein, Janice Reiff, Geoffrey Rockwell, Jon Saklofske, Stéfan Sinclair, Lisa Spiro, Joshua Sternfeld, Elaine Sullivan, Willeke Wendrich, and Peter J. Wosh.