My research directions
My research tends to be interdisciplinary, bringing
together cultural studies, literary criticism, history and
art history, women and gender studies.
Below are my current and recent research projects.
Written in Thread: Needlework and Gender in Early Modern England and Europe
A Biographical Encyclopedia of Early Modern Englishwomen 1500-1650: Exemplary Lives and Memorable Acts
This project examines the nodes of gendered focus on needlework in the early modern culture across England and the Continent in order to discern why and how each node is created and what its layers and entanglements say about the culture--not only in gendered terms, but also in terms of the significance of needlework as part of the more general material culture. This new perspective locates needlework as a rhetorical field where the assignment of gender propriety, whether it is conceived in positive or negative terms, bears influence on production and use of embroidered objects. But, more importantly, this study brings to light the slippage of the prescribed gendered behaviors and attitudes. What emerges is a multifaceted model of gendering material culture whose boundaries are permeable and disposable.
Creating the Pre-Modern in the Post-Modern Classroom
This essay collection is focused on using creative assignments in teaching medieval and early modern history and literature courses. This book includes a wide range of essays exploring the creative ways of teaching, specific assignments, types of work produced by the students, and, most importantly, how doing creative work helps students to learn about the pre-modern. These essays center on the description of a successful creative project but many essays also include the broader pedagogical context, as well as the context of the medieval and early modern studies.
Co-edited with Carole Levin. Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2018.
Some of the women in this encyclopedia are, in fact, notorious but they contribute to women’s history and the cultural history of early modern England nonetheless. Further, these disreputable women are women of power and agency. They are, in fact, worth knowing. We also attend to some rather obscure figures, or rather to those who await attention from students and scholars in the field. We expect that this comprehensiveness will be one of the great strengths of this collection and intend for the volume to introduce many female figures to even the most established scholars in early modern studies.
Rather than simply being a biographical encyclopedia in alphabetical order, the book will be divided into categories of women so that one needn’t already be familiar with these subjects in order to benefit from the text. Co-edited with Carole Levin and Jo Eldridge Carney. Routledge, 2016.
Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies
What could be a better tribute to a prominent scholar of cultural history and an expert on the early modern queens than a volume of fresh scholarship examining early modern queenship? Seventeen scholars come together to contribute new studies that open innovative ways to look at the issues surrounding female sovereignty. Challenging the accepted assumptions about the subject, the chapters in this volume seek to augment and hone our understanding of historical, cultural, political, and literary matters related to queenship in the early modern period. Broad topics covered in this collection include marriage, gender, diplomacy, national identity, and religion. Palgrave, 2018.