Shakespeare and the Senses [Research Assistantship]

Department: English
Professor Holly Dugan
Project Description: I am working on a short monograph, designed to provide an overview for advanced undergraduates of the fields of Shakespeare studies, performance history, and sensory studies. Sensory history is a burgeoning field: What was once thought too ephemeral, idiosyncratic, or subjective to historicize is now a rich and interesting field of historical inquiry about life in the past. This is especially true for early modern theatre history and Shakespeare studies. Recent work on the sensory worlds of early modern England, including its acoustic, olfactory, gustatory, haptic, and visual realms, offer new ways of engaging with Shakespeare’s plays and with early modern performance studies, particularly the overlap between the two, or what Farah Karim-Cooper and Tiffany Stern have described as the “staged effects” of performance.
Malvolio’s yellow stockings; Fluellen’s Welsh accent; Juliet’s sweetly-scented roses; Katherine’s hunger for beef with hot mustard; Lady Macbeth’s overly-scrubbed hands: these sensuous details root his characters in their dramatic worlds and in our own. That interface—between the imagined sensory worlds of Shakespeare’s play and the material, sensory realm of audiences—is the subject of this book. In it, I explore how Shakespeare’s audiences might have perceived his plays by connecting early modern theories of sensation, the sensorium of London, and the space of theatres. Recent work in theatre history, sensory studies, and material culture offer a variety of new insights about how this interface may have worked in the past.
Duties: Working with me, the RA will generate relevant search terms, find published research, and synthesize critical arguments, compiling three annotated bibliographies (described below). The RA would meet with me bi-monthly to present the findings. If there is interest and if the RA has sufficient background in early modern literature and culture, there is an opportunity to engage in primary research (utilizing digital humanities databases such as EEBO TCP, artStor, Early Modern London Theatres, and the Map of Early Modern London.
Compile an annotated bibliography of recent works in the fields of sensory history, theater history, Renaissance history, and Shakespeare studies, organized around each of the five senses;
compile an annotated bibliography on scientific research on sensory modalities, including cross-modal perception, proprioception, extra-sensory perception, and synaesthesia;
and compile an annotated bibliography on recent research in Shakespeare Studies on audiences in early modern London.
Time Commitment/Credits: 4-6 hours weekly; 2 credits
To apply: Submit cover letter/resume to hdugan@gwu.edu