Dr Liz Oakley-Brown

PhD Supervision Interests

Liz would especially welcome research students working on the following aspects of sixteenth-century writing and culture:
corporeality, outlaws, queenship, spatiality, travel, the cultural politics of translation, adaptation.

Supervised Postgraduate Research: Charlotte McCool, 'The Politics and Poetics of Thomas Wyatt's "endless maze"' (2009-10, AHRC funded MRes); MA dissertations topics include 'Framing Pyramus and Thisbe in Middle English Literature'; 'Violent Death in Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama' 'Shakespeare and Ruskin' (with Andy Tate)

Current PhD Students
Helen Davies
'Unravelling the 'Disabled' Body in Early Modern England'
(2012- Peele scholarship)

Rachel White
'Occult Networks in Early Modern England 1550-1650'
(2012- AHRC funded)

Research Interests

Liz joined The Department in 2006. She completed her BA, MA and PhD at Cardiff University, and has previously taught at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth (2001-4) and Canterbury Christ Church University (2004-6).

She is currently working on two book-length studies which illustrate her main research areas: the cultural politics of translation and corporeal surfaces.

Liz's long-standing engagement with early modern translation studies is extended in Thomas Churchyard: Travel, Translation and Tudor Identities. In April 2010, Liz was awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship (2010-11) to work on the this monograph.

Her second major project -Shakespearean Skins: Reading, Writing and Performing Corporeal Surfaces in Sixteenth-Century England - is aligned with the innovative work of Lancaster's Shakespeare Programme. With Professor Alison Findlay, Liz convened a panel on Shakespearean Surfaces at the 2007 British Shakespeare Association conference. As part of this ongoing project, Alison and Liz directed a workshop on 'Ceremony, Performance and Practice in Shakespearean Drama' at the 2009 BSA conference at King's College, London (http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/humanities/news/conferences/localglobal/workshops.html). Ideas explored in these earlier sessions were developed in the 2012 British Shakespeare Association Conference, Shakespeare Inside-out: Depth/Surface/Meaning, which was held at Lancaster (http://www.britishshakespeare.ws/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=42:5th-biennial-british-shakespeare-association-conference&catid=10:shakespeare-blog&Itemid=4).

With Dr Rebecca Coleman, she is organising the inaugural Surface Studies Network Seminar at Lancaster University and the Storey Institute, 23-24 May 2013: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/faculty/event/4294/

Liz is an elected member of the Society for Renaissance Studies Council (May 2008-, http://www.rensoc.org.uk/), and she was the acting Membership Secretary 2011-12. In March 2011, she organised the Society's Annual Public Lecture at Lancaster's Storey Institute (http://www.rensoc.org.uk/SRS_Public_Lectures_current.htm)

She is a member of the Renaissance Editorial Board for Literature Compass (September 2009-, www.literature-compass.com).

Liz co-ordinates the Northern Renaissance Seminar: http://www.renaissances.uk.com/content/northern_ren.html

Current Teaching

Liz is on sabbatical term 2 (2013)

Undergraduate

Liz lectures on ENGL100 and CREW103. At Part II, she is seminar tutor and lecturer on ENGL201: Introduction to Theory (key topic: bodies); ENGL202: Renaissance to Restoration: English Literature 1580-1688 and ENGL306: Shakespeare. In 2008, -09 and -10, she taught the half-unit option, ENGL374: Reforming the Body in Elizabethan England. In 2012-, she is offering the half-unit option, Early Modern Outlaws on Land and Sea: Robin Hood and Pirates.

Postgraduate

As part of the MA course on Bodies and Spirits in Early Modern England (ENGL438) Liz teaches seminars on 'Constructions of the Body in Early Modern England', 'The Two Queens' Bodies: Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots' and 'George Gascoigne'. As part of the MA course Politics and Place in Early Modern Literature (ENGL439) she teaches the session on 'Soldiers and Space'.

• The Surface Studies Network

  01/06/2013 →
  Liz Oakley-Brown, Rebecca Coleman
  ... Read more»

• Corpus Research in Early Modern English

  01/10/2011 →
  Stephen Pumfrey, Paul Rayson, Alistair Baron, Alison Findlay, Liz Oakley-Brown, Jonathan Culpeper, Ian Gregory, Naomi Tadmor
  Summary: We are an interdisciplinary research group which is combining established areas of research excellence at Lancaster University. The emergent synthesis is generating unique methods and approac ... Read more»

• Shakespearean Skins: Reading, Writing and Performing Corporeal Surfaces in Sixteenth-Century Drama.

  01/08/2008 →
  Liz Oakley-Brown
  This project focuses on sixteenth-century drama's use of 'skin' as a means of initiating relationships between 'the visual and the haptic' (Benthien, 2002: 10). In 1996, Keir Elam discussed what he ... Read more»

• Literature Compass

  Liz Oakley-Brown (Editorial board member)
  Activity: Editorial activity
  Read more»