Visiting Lecturer in English Literature

I studied for my BA in English Literature with the Open University, followed by a Shakespeare in History MA at UCL. I stayed at UCL to complete my PhD in 2016, focusing on violence and ritual in the works of William Shakespeare and Edmund Spenser.

I have been teaching in Higher Education since 2015 and this year I am happy to be teaching Medieval Literature; Renaissance Literature; Shakespeare and his Contemporaries; and Restoration Literature, at the University of Bedfordshire.

Qualifications

• PhD in English Language and Literature, UCL
• MA in Shakespeare in History, UCL
• BA (Hons) in English Literature, Open University

Teaching expertise

I have previously taught research methods and seventeenth-century women’s writing at UCL as well as practical criticism at Downing College, Cambridge.

Since 2015 I have taught regularly at Anglia Ruskin University, including on their Shakespeare Text and Performance and Spectacle and Representation in Renaissance Drama units, as well as on the MA in Shakespeare and Society.

In addition, I have been teaching at the University of Cambridge since 2018, on the undergraduate Renaissance Paper for Girton, St Edmund’s, and Wolfson colleges, as well as supervising several undergraduate dissertations and essay portfolios.

Research

I have been awarded a postdoctoral fellowship with the Society for Renaissance Studies for 2020/21 and will be researching the ways in which early modern preachers spoke about disability and the body.

I am also working on a book based on my PhD thesis, to be published by Routledge.

Publications

Forthcoming: "Sexual and Economic Constructions of Women's Lameness in the Norwich Poor Census". (Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Fall 2020)

‘The Lame Man Makes the Best Lecher: Sex, Sin, and the Disabled Renaissance Body’, in Framing Premodern Desires (eds. Meri Heinonen, Tom Linkinen, Satu Lidman and Marjo Kaartinen, Amsterdam University Press, 2017)

‘Bisexual and Disabled’, in Purple Prose: Bisexuality in Britain (Ed. Kate Harrad, Thorntree Press, 2016)

‘Comment from the Field: Northern Renaissance Seminar: “Disability and the Renaissance”, Leeds Trinity University College’, Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, vol. 7, issue 2, (2013)

‘Guidelines for Bisexuality Research (Arts and Humanities)’, with Dr Caroline Walters (published online by BiUK, http://bisexualresearch.wordpress.com/reports-guidance/guidance/research-guidelines-arts-humanities October 2012)

'Towards a Bisexual Shakespeare: The Social Importance of Specifically Bisexual Readings of Shakespeare', Journal of Bisexuality, vol. 11, issues 2&3, (2011)

Selected Conference Papers

• Forthcoming: ‘“Cradeled in a cratch or manger”: Reflections of attitudes to the Eucharist in the word choices of early modern preachers’, Society for Renaissance Studies Biennial Conference, Norwich, July 2021.
• ‘Here, Queer, Shakespeare’, Show Thy Queere Substance, University of Westminster, 8 July 2017
• ‘Spiritual and Musculoskeletal Integrity in Shakespeare and Early Modern Sermons’, Disability and Shakespearean Theatre Symposium, Glasgow, 20 April 2016
• ‘Wrestling the Angel in Early Modern Sermons’, RSA Annual Meeting, Boston, 1 April 2016
• ‘Representations of Lameness in Early Modern Religious Writing’, Reading Early Modern Studies Conference, University of Reading, 8 July 2015
• ‘Bodying Forth: Spenser and Shakespeare’s Disabled Reprobates’, British Graduate Shakespeare Conference (Britgrad), Shakespeare Institute, 5 June 2015
• ‘“A Grisly Passage”: Gender, Desire, and the Disabled Renaissance Body’, Framing Premodern Desires, University of Turku, 4-5 April 2014
• ‘“In a maze they both did long remaine”: Positive Madness and Sexuality in Shakespeare and Spenser’, Northern Renaissance Seminar: Disability and the Renaissance, Leeds Trinity University College, 8 September 2012

Contact

E: kaye.mclelland@beds.ac.uk