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Dr Liz Oakley-Brown

Liz Oakley-Brown

Lecturer in Shakespeare and Renaissance Writing

Department: English and Creative Writing

Current Teaching

UNDERGRADUATE (2011-12)

Convenor/Tutor - Renaissance to Restoration: English Literature 1580-1688 (ENGL202); Convenor/Tutor - Early Modern Outlaws on Land and Sea: Robin Hood and Pirates (ENGL379); Convenor - Beyond Undergraduate English (E.CW 300); Tutor - The Theory and Practice of Criticism (ENGL201)

POSTGRADUATE (2011-12)

Co-convenor/tutor - Bodies and Spirits in Early Modern England (ENGL438); Co-convenor/tutor - Politics and Place in Early Modern Literature (ENGL439)

ADMINISTRATION (2011-12)

Careers and Employability

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, embodiment, theorising 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, and current work-in-progress includes an article on drama, cinematic adaptation and haptic visuality entitled 'From the Film of the Skin to The Skin of Film: Screening As You Like It'.

With Professor Alison Findlay, Liz convened a panel on Shakespearean Surfaces at the 2007 British Shakespeare Association conference. As part of this ongoing research, 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 will be developed at the 2012 British Shakespeare Association Conference, Shakespeare Inside-out: Depth/Surface/Meaning, which will be 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) and in the new interdisciplinary project provisionally entitled Screening the Surface (with Rebecca Coleman (Sociology)).

Potential Doctoral Proposals

Liz would especially welcome research students interested in the following areas of early modern writing and culture: embodiment; outlaws on land and/or sea; queenship; the cultural politics of translation; adaptation studies.

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); 'Thomas Nashe and The Terrors of the Night'

Select Publications

Book

Ovid and the Cultural Politics of Translation in Early Modern England (Ashgate, 2006).

Edited Books and Special Issues of Journals

ed. (with Alison Findlay), Twelfth Night (Continuum Renaissance Drama Series, (Continuum, contracted 2012).

ed. Shakespeare and the Translation of Identity in Early Modern England (Continuum, 2011).

ed. (with Anne Cronin) Urban Spaces, special issue of Feminist Review 96 (2010).

ed. (with Louise Wilkinson) The Rituals and Rhetoric of Queenship: Medieval to Early Modern (Four Courts Press, 2009).

ed. (with Roger Ellis) Translation and Nation: Towards a Cultural Politics of Englishness (Multilingual Matters, 2001).

Journal Articles

'Taxonomies of Travel and Martial Identity in Thomas Churchyard's A generall rehearsall of warres and 'A Pirates Tragedie' (1579), Studies in Travel Writing 12.1 (2008): 67-84.

'Titus Andronicus and the Cultural Politics of Translation in Early Modern England', Renaissance Studies 19.3 (2005): 325-47.

'Ovid's Metamorphoses and the Sexual Politics of Translation in Early Modern England', Literature Compass, 1, 2003, 1-19.

Chapters in Books

'Shakespeare and the Translation of the Classics', in The Cambridge World Shakespeare Encyclopedia, gen. ed. Bruce R. Smith (5000-word essay, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

'Elizabethan Exile After Ovid: Thomas Churchyard's Tristia (1572)' in Two Thousand Years of Solitude: Exile after Ovid, ed. by Jennifer Ingleheart (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2011).

'Writing on Borderlines: Thomas Churchyard's The Worthines of Wales', in Writing Wales from the Reformation to Romanticism, ed. by Stewart Mottram and Sarah Prescott (Ashgate, forthcoming 2012).

'Resources: Mapping Texts, Spaces, Bodies' in Women Beware Women, ed. by Andrew Hiscock, Continuum Renaissance Drama Series, (Continuum, 2011), pp. 171-188.

'Translation', in A New Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture, ed.by Michael Hattaway (Blackwell, 2010), pp. 120-133.

"'My lord, be ruled by me": Shakespeare's Tamora and the failure of queenship', in The Rituals and Rhetoric of Queenship: Medieval to Early Modern, ed. by Liz Oakley-Brown and Louise Wilkinson (Four Courts Press, 2009), pp. 222-237.

'Framing Robin Hood: Textuality and Temporality in Anthony Munday's Huntington Plays', in Robin Hood: Medieval and Post-Medieval , ed. by Helen Phillips (Four Courts Press, 2005), pp. 113-128.

'Translating the Subject: Ovid's Metamorphoses in England 1560-67', in Translation and Nation: Towards A Cultural Politics of Englishness, ed. by Roger Ellis and Liz Oakley-Brown (Multilingual Matters, 2001), pp. 48-84.

Other Publications

(with Claire Jowitt), 'A Pirate for All Seasons? Captain Kidd and Pirates in Popular Culture', The Journal for Maritime Research (forthcoming).

'Thomas Churchyard' and 'Arthur Golding', in The Encyclopedia of English Renaissance Literature, ed. by Garrett Sullivan and Alan Stewart (Blackwell, forthcoming).

'Love in Renaissance Literature', inThe Encyclopedia of Love in World Religions,ed. by Yudit Kornberg Greenberg (ABC-Clio, 2007).

(with Matt Jarvis) 'Talking After Theory: An Interview with Terry Eagleton', English, 53 (2004): 177-190 .

'The Cultural Politics of Classical Translation', English, 52.202 (2003): 81-85.

Further Professional Activities

The Society for Renaissance Studies - Liz is an elected member of the Society for Renaissance Studies Council (May 2008-, http://www.rensoc.org.uk/), and Membership Secretary for Renewals and Institutions. 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)

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

The Northern Renaissance Seminar - Liz is on the steering committee of the Northern Renaissance Seminar: http://www.renaissances.uk.com/content/northern_ren.html Please contact her if you would like to offer a seminar and/or be added to the group's mailing list.

Ruskin and the Renaissance - in collaboration with Professor Stephen Wildman (Director, Ruskin Library and Research Centre) and Dr Andrew Tate (Associate Director, Ruskin Library and Research Centre), there are plans for the 2012-13 Ruskin Seminar programme to feature a series of talks on the topic of 'Ruskin and the Renaissance': http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/ruskin/index.php

Associated Keywords: Adaptation, Bodies, Cultural geography, Early modern culture, Early modern writing, English, Identity politics, Landscape, Literary criticism, Literature, Literature and politics, Literature and power, Outlaws, Ovid, Queenship, Renaissance drama, Ritual studies, Sexualities, Shakespeare, Sixteenth-century culture, Sixteenth-century literature, Skin, Spatiality, Subjectivity, Textual criticism, The body, Theory, Translation, War, Word and image studies