Dr Tom Rutter
School of English
Senior Lecturer in Shakespeare and Renaissance Drama
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+44 114 222 8473
Full contact details
School of English
Jessop West
1 Upper Hanover Street
Sheffield
S3 7RA
- Profile
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I arrived at the University of Sheffield in 2012 after six years at Sheffield Hallam University, before which I taught at University College London (where I took my PhD) and then at London South Bank University. Before that, I studied for my BA at St John’s College, Oxford.
My main area of expertise is Renaissance literature, especially drama. My PhD explored the representation of work on the early modern stage; when rewriting my thesis as a book I became increasingly interested in playing companies and how they bring together the activities of disparate groups such as dramatists, actors, audiences, patrons, theatre owners and booksellers, offering a way of linking dramatic production to wider forces in society. This 'repertory approach' informed my second monograph, which focused on a single company, the Admiral’s Men. My main current project is on early modern drama and science.
I am co-director of the Sheffield Centre for Early Modern Studies.
- Research interests
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In 2017 I published a book about the Admiral’s Men, having produced several essays and articles about plays in their repertory. I also have a particular interest in the plays of Shakespeare (who didn’t write for the Admiral’s Men) and Marlowe, as well as in the institutional contexts of the early modern theatre. I recently co-edited (with Lisa Hopkins of Sheffield Hallam University) a collection of essays on the Cavendish family, and I am currently writing a book on Shakespeare and science.
I am an editor of the journal Shakespeare: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rshk20
- Publications
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Books
- The Arden Handbook of Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
Edited books
Journal articles
- Afterword. Comparative Drama, 55(2-3), 404-413.
- Shakespeare, Serlio, and Giulio Romano. English Literary Renaissance, 49(2), 248-272. View this article in WRRO
- View this article in WRRO
- Patient Grissil and Jonsonian satire. SEL - Studies in English Literature, 48(2), 283-303.
- Repertory studies: A survey. Shakespeare, 4(3), 336-350.
- Issues in review: Dramatists, playing companies, and repertories: Introduction. Early Theatre, 13(2).
- Marlowe, the ‘Mad Priest of the Sun’, and Heliogabalus. Early Theatre, 13(1).
Chapters
- The communities of George Chapman’s All Fools, Community-Making in Early Stuart Theatres (pp. 236-256). Routledge
- The communities of George Chapman’s All Fools In Johnson A, Sell R & Wilcox A (Ed.), Community-Making in Early Stuart Theatres: Stage and Audience (pp. 218-238). Abingdon: Routledge.
- Texts and Performances in the Age of Elizabeth, A Companion to British Literature (pp. 181-196). John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
Book reviews
Donald A Beecher andGrant Williams (eds). Henry Chettle, ‘Kind-Heart’s Dream’ and ‘Piers Plainness’: Two Pamphlets from the Elizabethan Book Trade. The Review of English Studies, 74(314), 357-359.- Bonnie Lander Johnson and Eleanor Decamp (eds.), Blood Matters: Studies in European Literature and Thought, 1400–1700. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. ix + 354 pp. £72.00. ISBN 978‐0‐8122‐5021‐3 (hb).. Renaissance Studies, 34(3), 490-492.
- Phantasmatic Shakespeare: Imagination in the Age of Early Modern Science. Shakespeare, 15(4), 453-454.
- King John (Mis)Remembered: The Dunmow Chronicle, the Lord Admiral’s Men, and the Formation of Cultural Memory by Igor Djordjevic. Comparative Drama, 50(1), 123-125.
- . The Modern Language Review, 110(3), 823-823.
- . The Modern Language Review, 107(2), 610-610.
- RICHARD RAATZSCH, The Apologetics of Evil: The Case of Iago.. Notes and Queries, 57(2), 259-260.
- Laurie Maguire, Shakespeare's Names.. Notes and Queries, 55(4), 528-530.
- Unsettled: The Culture of Mobility and the Working Poor in Early Modern England. The Modern Language Review, 103(2), 508-508.
- English Renaissance drama. NOTES AND QUERIES, 55(1), 92-94.
- Janette Dillon, The Cambridge Introduction to Early English Theatre.Peter Womack, English Renaissance Drama.. Notes and Queries, 55(1), 92-94.
- Masculinity, Anti-Semitism and Early Modern English Literature: From the Satanic to the Effeminate Jew by Matthew Biberman. Modern Language Review, 102(1), 206-207.
- Imaginary Betrayals: Subjectivity and the Discourses of Treason in Early Modern England. The Modern Language Review, 99(2), 461-461.
- Renaissance Configurations: Voices/Bodies/Spaces, 1580-1690. The Modern Language Review, 99(1), 155-155.
- Showing like a Queen: Female Authority and Literary Experiment in Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton. The Yearbook of English Studies, 32, 286-286.
- Bart van Es. Shakespeare in Company. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp xiv, 357.. Early Theatre, 18(1).
- Mark Bayer. Theatre, Community, and Civic Engagement in Jacobean London. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2011. Pp xii, 258.. Early Theatre, 17(1).
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Other
- The Arden Handbook of Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
- Research group
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I am currently supervising PhDs on Renaissance literature and the Gothic, and on Shakespeare and the elements. Recent PhDs include dissertations on cloth in the plays of Thomas Middleton and an edition of Samuel Daniel’s Cleopatra.
I would welcome applications to do postgraduate work on Renaissance drama, particularly in the areas of Shakespeare, Marlowe, repertory studies, and early modern science.
- Teaching activities
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I teach on the following modules:
- LIT113: Foundations in Literary Study
- LIT114: Shakespeare
- LIT120: Renaissance to Revolution
- LIT254: Christopher Marlowe
- LIT6047: Early Modern Books
- LIT646: Renaissance Transformations
- EGH601: Shakespeare and Early Women Dramatists
- EGH602 Research Methods In English Studies
- EGH629: Pastoral Literature
I am also programme director for the MA English Literature programme.