Jillian Luke

Thesis title: The Early Modern Blush 1500-1700

Biography

Background

I have a BA in English Literature from Christ's College, University of Cambridge and an MA in Medieval and Renaissance Literary Studies from Durham University, where I finished top of my year and was awarded the Ramen Selden prize. 

After a brief stint as a copywriter at an advertising agency, I started my PhD at Edinburgh in 2017. My research is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council through the Scottish Graduate School of Arts and Humanities. My project is called 'The Early Modern Blush 1590-1700'. 

In 2019, I won an AHRC award to support my time as a visiting fellow at Harvard University. 

I specialise in early modern English Literature, with a particular interest in representations of  the body, specifically in the representation of gender, race, and emotion. I also have an  interest in European visual culture, chiefly Northern Renaissance art. 

 

Publications

Articles 

'Milton's unblushing roses', Notes and Queries (forthcoming, June 2021)

‘What if the play were called Ophelia? Gender and genre in Hamlet’, Cambridge Quarterly,  49 (2020), 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1093/camqtly/bfz038 

“‘Draw thy rapier for we’ll have a bout”: Duelling on the early modern stage’, Seventeenth  Century, 34 (2019), 283-303. https://bit.ly/2NrCSek 

 

Reference entries 

‘Elizabeth Bathurst’, in Palgrave Encyclopaedia of Early Modern Women’s Writing, ed.  Suzanne Trill, Natasha Simonova, and Lucy Walters (forthcoming). 

‘Lilias Dunbar’, Palgrave Encyclopaedia of Early Modern Women’s Writing, ed. Suzanne  Trill, Natasha Simonova, and Lucy Walters (forthcoming). 

‘Dewans Morey’, in Palgrave Encyclopaedia of Early Modern Women’s Writing, ed.  Suzanne Trill, Natasha Simonova, and Lucy Walters (forthcoming). 

 

Responsibilities & affiliations

Edinburgh Early Modern Network

Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies Steering Committee

Undergraduate teaching

I teach English Literature 1, the compulsory first year undergraduate module here at the English Faculty. I teach both the first term overview paper, and the second term Medieval and Renaissance paper. 

Current research interests

My PhD research is on the blush in early modern literature. Blushing can signify a range of emotional states: guilt, embarrassment, shame, fear, arousal, anger… It is not always easy to tell one kind of blush from another, which makes acts of interpretation - both by readers and by characters within texts - difficult. My research traces the blush through a wide range of literary genres to ask: why do people in early modern literature spend so much of their time blushing? And what can that preoccupation tell us about how early modern Europeans understood their bodies?

Knowledge exchange

You can listen to me talk about my research on Radio 3 here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000fpj2

Current project grants

SGSAH/ AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership

Past project grants

AHRC Student Development Fund grant to support fellowship at Harvard University
Durham University Postgraduate Scholarship
College Scholarship (Christ's College, University of Cambridge)

Organiser

Seduction. University of Edinburgh & University of Glasgow, November 2018

 

 

Papers delivered

‘Friends, Romans, crocodiles: Roman masculinity on the English stage’ Renaissance Academic Drama Conference, St. Andrews (online), June 2020.  

‘A short history of blushing’ , Edinburgh Early Modern Network, University of Edinburgh, December 2019. 

'Love’s proper hue: Blushing in Paradise Lost’. British Milton seminar, University of Birmingham, October 2019.

‘Adam and Eve painted, printed, poeticised’.Material and Visual Culture Seminar, University of Edinburgh, October 2019. 

‘A rush of blood to the head: Blushing in Shakespeare’, Work in progress seminar, University of Edinburgh, September 2019.

‘Rotten oranges or silver screens? Blushing bodies in early modern England’.Rethinking objects: New directions for pre-modern materiality studies, Newcastle University, September 2019.

‘“God has given you one face and you make yourselves another”: Faking blushes on the early modern stage’. Faking it! Forgery and fabrication in early modern and late medieval culture, University of Gothenburg, August 2019.

‘Was there sex in Eden?’ SGSAH summer symposium: Sharing studies, University of Glasgow, June 2019.

'The silence of the femmes, or, Shakespeare's quiet women'. Bad Romance: The Ethics of Love, Sex, and Desire. Harvard University. March 2019. 

'Pity a Woman’: Blushing and the representation of sexual assault in Thomas Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller'. The Twentieth Annual British Graduate Shakespeare Conference, Shakespeare Institute, June 2018.

Beyond the Pale: Blushing and boundaries in English translations of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus 1565-1717. Space, Place, and Interface: Being in the Early Modern World, University of Exeter, May 2018.

Bodies and Boundaries 1500-1800, University of California at Santa Barbara, March 2018.

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