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School of Arts, Histories and Cultures

Medieval and Early Modern Studies at Manchester

why come to Manchester?   MA Literature and Culture 1200-1700  doctoral research   learning resources     staff research interests

'I've really enjoyed studying for a PhD at Manchester. The postgraduate community in English and American Studies is very supportive, and my supervisors were excellent. It was also exciting to be involved with an interdisciplinary research environment, with lots of opportunities for interaction with other subject areas.'

Why Come to Manchester?
teaching   success   resources   research environment
MA Literature and Culture 1200-1700

Teaching and Research expertise

Books recently authored, forthcoming or edited by members of the department include Royalist Identities; The Fat, the Black, the Plain and the Ugly; Medieval Virginities; God's Irishmen; Virgins: A cultural history; Reading the Medieval in Early Modern England; Medieval Cultural Studies; Women's Reading in Britain

The department regularly runs postgraduate masterclasses by visiting speakers; seminar leaders have included Stephen Knight, Blair Worden, Ruth Evans, Sharon Achinstein, Ann Hughes, Martin Dzelzainis and Catherine Belsey.

MA in Literature and Culture 1200-1700

Modules include:

(Prospective students should note that all course offerings are not available every year)

 

To apply go here

Postgraduate success rate

Many of our MA students progress into PhD studies in medieval and early modern literature and  culture. English and American Studies has a much higher AHRC success rate than do many of  our  peers elsewhere.


Library and Learning Resources

The John Rylands University Library is one of the finest research libraries in the world. The library - the largest on-campus university library in the UK - has a number of concentrations relevant to students of medieval and early modern studies. Its holdings - both of primary and secondary material - are extensive and cover, among other areas, Arthurian and Chaucer studies, medieval and early modern gender and sexuality, medievalism, medieval and early modern religious writings

The University of Manchester subscribes to a number of relevant online databases, gutenberg 2including Early English Books Online, a massive and ever-expanding database of facsimile versions of books published in English before 1700. It also subscribes to a range of image collections, such as LUNA and ARTSTOR

In addition, the Special Collections unit holds a number of important manuscripts, printed texts and documentary collections for scholars working in medieval and early modern studies. It has collected some 12,500 books printed between 1475 and 1640, and some 45,000 printed between 1641 and 1700 (which include a significant collection of works by the early printer, William Caxton). The collections include:

Students can also use Chetham's library, founded in 1653, which has an exceptional collection of rare books, pamphlets and manuscripts

Research Environment
seminars/ lectures conferences  MANCASS  MIMRA

English and American Studies fosters a dynamic and innovative research environment. The subject area's weekly research seminars regularly feature medieval and early modern topics, and, in addition, a number of other seminars, annual lectures and conferences are sustained. Recent visiting scholars have included Dr Suzanne Trill (Edinburgh), Dr Jess Edwards (MMU), Dr Bernhard Klein (Essex), Dr Elspeth Graham (Liverpool John Moores), James Knowles (Keele), Alison Findlay (Lancaster) and Peter Smith (NTU).

The Middle English Seminar has hosted speakers including (in the past two years): Professor Larry Scanlon (Rutgers), Professor Ruth Evans (Stirling), Dr Sarah Salih (UEA), Dr Anthony Bale (Birkbeck), Professor Diane Watt (Aberystwyth), Dr. Isobel Davis (Birkbeck) and Professor John Ganim (University of California, Riverside).

The subject area also hosts the annual John Stachniewski Memorial Lecture, in memory of one of its most celebrated late colleagues. Stachniewski lecturers have included such distinguished scholars as Professors John Carey, Gary Taylor, Richard Wilson, Alan Sinfield Catherine Belsey and Willy Maley. This year's lecture will be delivered by Professor Kate McCluskie, Director of the Shakespeare Institute.

Recent conferences organised by early modern scholars in the subject area have included 'Textual Lives: Autobiography and the Archive' (at Chethams Library, 2005) and 'Early Modern Terrorism' (at the Imperial War Museum North, 2005) and 'Court Culture, 1642-1660', at (Hampton Court Palace, 2006). With Dr. Crawford Gribben of Trinity College, Dublin, Jerome de Groot convenes the Radical and Royalist Religion 1642-1660 workshop, joint funded by the ARHC and the IRCHSS.

There is an annual Middle English Day School, which has focused on topics such as 'The Body in Medieval Culture' (2003), 'Medieval Nations' (2005) and 'Medieval Identities' (2006). The annual Brook lecture in Middle-English was delivered in 2007 by Stephen Knight (Cardiff), speaking on Merlin in Middle English.

Students are encouraged to attend meetings of the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies, which hosts lectures by three distinguished visiting speakers each year as well as the prestigious Toller Lecture.

Held in conjunction with the Toller lecture is the MANCASS graduate students' conference, where students from home and away can read a first paper in friendly surroundings. Written version of papers are refereed and published on the MANCASS website. MANCASS runs an international conference each Easter which graduate students are encouraged to attend. The 2006 conference, 3-5 April, on 'Royal authority: kingship and power in Anglo-Saxon England' was directed by Professor Gale Owen-Crocker, and the 2007 conference, directed by Professor Nick Higham, was on Anglo-Saxon Landscape.

Manchester Interdisciplinary Medieval Research in the Arts (MIMRA) is a postgraduate research group founded by doctoral students in October 2006, facilitated by medievalist members of staff.  It brings together postgraduates and academics throughout the School of Arts, Histories, and Cultures.

Doctoral study
We welcome research proposals in most areas of Medieval and Early Modern Study, including:

Medieval Literary and Cultural Studies

Medieval literary and cultural studies covers all periods within the English Middle Ages and range across literature from the earliest Anglo-Saxon material to fifteenth-century poetry. Principal areas of research include Anglo-Saxon literature; literature of the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; borders and nations in literature; allegory; virginities; palaeography; onomastics; study of textiles; allegory; virginities, and post-medievalisms

Early Modern Literary and Cultural Studies
We have a number of key research themes within Early Modern literary and cultural studies including the Civil wars of the 1640s and 1650s, nationalism, ugliness, Royalism, women's writing and reading, life-writing, manuscript study and the later reception of the period


Academic Staff Research Interests and Specialisms

Naomi Baker

Early modern literature, particularly the construction and representation of identity in seventeenth-century writing; autobiographical writing; gendered and religious identities; dissenting religious contexts; radical religious women's life writings; travel narratives; English and colonial identities in early modern Quaker narratives; representations of beauty and ugliness in early modern literature

Anke Bernau

Medieval literature and culture, especially: religious writings (hagiography, mysticism, popular piety); travel writing; romance; historiography; medievalism; gender; medieval nationhood; medieval film; virginities (medieval to modern)

Jerome de Groot

Literature and culture 1630-1670, especially: Royalism and writing of the civil wars 1640-1660; the court, 1640-1660; coterie culture in London; manuscript culture and transmission; the city and University of Oxford; gender; masculinity; propaganda and censorship; Sir John Denham; John Cleveland; Richard Lovelace; the regicide; prison writing

David Matthews

Medieval political writing, especially political verse and chronicle writing in the period 1258-1352; medieval nationhood; vernacularity; medievalism, particularly in 18th-19th century British culture, and Australian colonial culture

Gale R. Owen-Crocker

Interdisciplinary approaches to Old English literature and culture (drawing on, for instance, archaeology, art, archaeology, glosses and text to explore the obscure issue of Anglo-Saxon dress); medieval clothing and textiles; Bayeux tapestry

Jackie Pearson

Restoration women dramatists (esp. Aphra Behn, Jane Barker, Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, Aemilia Lanyer, Susanna Centlivre); women's reading in the early modern period; conversion narratives; early modern subjectivities and communities; gender and reading in the 'long' seventeenth century; early modern supernatural contact narratives (ghosts, witches, demonic possession, fairies, etc.)

Alex Rumble

Donald Scragg

Jeremy Tambling

Jeremy Tambling is Professor of Literature, author of Dante and Difference: Writing in the Commedia (Cambridge, 1988) and Allegory and the Work of Melancholy: The Late Medieval and Shakespeare (Rodopi, 2004). He edited Dante: A Reader (Longman 1998), and has written articles on Dante, and Hoccleve in New Medieval Literatures 6 (2005), and Shakespeare. He is particularly interested in connecting earlier and later texts, as in essays on Dante and Blake, and on Dantfe and Joyce, and on Shakespeare and Levinas

 

Images reproduced by courtesy of the University Librarian and Director, The John Rylands University Library, The University of Manchester

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