Professor Katharine Craik

Director of Research and Professor in Early Modern Literature (1500-1750)

School of Education, Humanities and Languages

Role

Katharine’s work explores what literature can reveal about life, living and aliveness. Her main research interests lie in Shakespeare and in critical-creative writing, and she has published widely on the history of the emotions, senses and sensation. Katharine completed her BA, MPhil and PhD at the University of Cambridge and previously held lectureships and fellowships at Worcester College (University of Oxford), the University of Leeds, and University College London.

Katharine is currently working on two monographs: a study of vividness and artificial life entitled Lifelike Shakespeare (Oxford University Press, forthcoming) and Shakespeare and the Senses (also under contract with Oxford University Press). Her new critical-creative collaboration Unbelonging, with visual artist Catriona Dooley, is supported by a grant from Arts Council England. Previously Katharine’s research has been supported by funding from the Wellcome Trust and the British Academy.

Katharine’s first book Reading Sensations in Early Modern England (Palgrave, 2007) explored the power of literature to affect readers’ minds, bodies and souls. She has published two collections of essays: Shakespeare and Emotion (Cambridge University Press, 2020); and, with Tanya Pollard, Shakespearean Sensations: The Experience of Theatre in Early Modern England (Cambridge University Press, 2013). Her archival work on Ben Jonson’s masques was published in The Cambridge Works of Ben Jonson (2014). Katharine is Executive Secretary of The Malone Society. Since its foundation in 1906, the Society’s purpose has been to make accessible the materials essential for the study of early modern drama.

Katharine was Principal Investigator on Watching, a project funded by an Arts Award from the Wellcome Trust to explore the history of sleep. A collaboration between academics, scientists, theatre practitioners and schools, Watching culminated in four promenade performances by twilight of Katharine’s new opera on sleep in the glasshouses of Edinburgh’s Royal Botanic Garden. Watching was profiled on BBC Radio 3 and on Radio Scotland. With Ewan Fernie, Katharine developed and co-wrote Marina, a new play based on Shakespeare’s Pericles adopted for Research and Development with the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2018.

Katharine writes creatively, and her poems appeared in The Harvard Review in 2019. Her poetry was longlisted for the National Poetry Prize in 2022 and 2020, and has been shortlisted for the international Bridport Prize and for the Dermot Healy Poetry Competition. Katharine co-edits beyond criticism, a series of experimental books with the independent Boiler House Press which explores the spaces between critical and creative thought.

Katharine is a Fellow of the English Association, a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a member of the AHRC Peer Review College. She has served as External Examiner for BA programmes at the University of Bristol, and for MA programmes at the Shakespeare Institute. She has examined PhD dissertations at Durham, Bristol, Lancaster, King’s College London, the Shakespeare Institute, University College London, Cambridge, St Andrews and Loughborough; and internationally at the University of Western Australia and the University of Sydney.

Teaching and supervision

Courses

Modules taught

Shakespeare Now
Renaissance Material Culture
Advanced Options (The Theatrical City)
Transgressive Texts

Supervision

Katharine welcomes enquiries from students interested in pursuing doctoral study in Shakespeare or early modern literature.

Research

Centres and institutes

Poetry Centre

Groups

Projects as Principal Investigator, or Lead Academic if project is led by another Institution

Unbelonging (led by Catriona Dooley) (01/01/2025 - 30/06/2025), funded by: Arts Council England

Publications

Craik K, "Persuasion by Similitude": Finding Likeness in Shakespeare's "A Lover's Complaint"
Shakespeare Survey 77 (2024) pp.51-61 ISSN: 0080-9152 "Persuasion by Similitude": Finding Likeness in Shakespeare's "A Lover's Complaint" Open Access version on RADAR
Craik KA, Chapman SJ, "By Time’s fell hand": Shakespeare and Emotional Lockdown
Mayo Clinic Proceedings: Innovations, Quality and Outcomes 95 (10) (2020) pp.2073-2075 ISSN: 2542-4548 eISSN: 2542-4548 "By Time’s fell hand": Shakespeare and Emotional Lockdown Open Access version on RADAR
Craik K, Staging rhetorical vividness in "Coriolanus"
Shakespeare Studies 47 (2019) pp.143-168 ISSN: 0582-9399 Staging rhetorical vividness in "Coriolanus" Open Access version on RADAR
Craik K, Poetry, Anatomy, Presence
Renaissance Studies 32 (5) (2017) pp.755-777 ISSN: 0269-1213 eISSN: 1477-4658 Poetry, Anatomy, Presence Open Access version on RADAR
Craik K A, Sympathetic Sonnets
Shakespeare Survey 69 (2016) pp.313-323 ISSN: 0080-9152
Craik KA, John Taylor's Pot Poetry
The Seventeenth Century 20 (2) (2005) pp.185-203 ISSN: 0268-117X
Craik KA, Reading Coryats Crudities
SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 44 (1) (2004) pp.77-96 ISSN: 0039-3657
Craik K, Shakespeare’s A Lover’s Complaint and Early Modern Criminal Confession
Shakespeare Quarterly 53 (4) (2002) pp.437-459 ISSN: 0037-3222 eISSN: 1538-3555
Craik K, Edmund Spenser’s Complaints and the New Poet
Huntington Library Quarterly 64 (1/2) (2001) pp.63-79 ISSN: 0018-7895 eISSN: 1544-399X
Craik K, "These Almost Thingles Things" : Thomas Moffat’s The Silkewormes and English Renaissance Georgic
Cahiers Élisabéthains: A Journal of English Renaissance Studies 60 (1) (2001) pp.53-66 ISSN: 0184-7678 eISSN: 2054-4715

Craik K, (ed.), Shakespeare and Emotion ,
Cambridge University Press (2020) ISBN: 9781108416160 eISBN: 9781108235952 Shakespeare and Emotion Open Access version on RADAR
Craik K, (ed.), Shakespearean Sensations: Experiencing Literature in Early Modern England ,
Cambridge University Press (2013) ISBN: 9781107559493
Craik KA, Reading Sensations in Early Modern England ,
Palgrave Macmillan (2007) ISBN: 9781403921925 eISBN: 9780230206083
Craik K, (ed.), Edition of Jane Collier, An Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting,
Oxford University Press (2006) ISBN: 9780199555444

Craik K, Keeping Corners: Emotional and Spatial Confinement in "Othello"
in Isabel Karreman (ed.), Shakespeare / Space, Bloomsbury (2024)
Craik K, Fernie E, Performing Chastity: the Marina Project
in Julia Lupton and Donovan Sherman (ed.), Shakespeare and Virtue: A Handbook, Cambridge University Press (2023) ISBN: 9781108843409 eISBN: 9781108918589 Performing Chastity: the Marina Project Open Access version on RADAR
Craik K, Life and Lifelikeness in Euripides’ "Alcestis" and Shakespeare’s "The Winter’s Tale"
in Antonia Marie Reinke, Zack Case, Marcus Ellis (ed.), Greek Drama and the Senses, Cambridge University Press (2023)
Craik K, Remembering Water in Robert Yarington’s "Two Lamentable Tragedies"
in Isabel Karreman and Jonathan Baldo (ed.), Memory and Affect in Shakespeare’s England, Cambridge University Press (2023) ISBN: 9781316517697 eISBN: 9781009047111
Craik KA, Fine art Shakespeare editions
in Fernie E, Epps T (ed.), 50 Treasures of the Birmingham Shakespeare Library, History West Midlands (2022)
Craik K, Chapman SJ, Being Breathed: from King Lear to clinical medicine
in Jane MacNaughton, David Fuller and Corinne Saunders (ed.), The life of breath in literature, culture and medicine: Classical to contemporary, Palgrave MacMillan (2021) ISBN: 9783030744427 eISBN: 9783030744434 Being Breathed: from King Lear to clinical medicine Open Access version on RADAR
Craik, K., Writing hard: The poetics of candour in Dylan and Shakespeare
in Gary Browning and Constantine Sandis (ed.), Dylan at 80, Imprint Academic (2021) ISBN: 9781788360456 Writing hard: The poetics of candour in Dylan and Shakespeare Open Access version on RADAR
Craik K A, Fernie E, The Marina Project
in Fernie E, Edmondson P (ed.), New Places: Shakespeare and Civic Creativity, Arden Shakespeare (Bloomsbury) (2018) ISBN: 9781474244558
Katharine A. Craik, Ben Jonson's Dubia: Sir Walter Ralegh's "History of the World"
in David Bevington Martin Butler Ian Donaldson (ed.), The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson Online, Cambridge University Press (2016)
Craik K A, Sorting Pistol's Blood: Social Class and the Circulation of Character in Shakespeare's 2 Henry IV and Henry V
in Lander B (ed.), Blood Matters: Studies in European Literature and Thought, 1400-1700, University of Pennsylvania Press (2016) ISBN: 9780812250213
Craik K, Ten Times Happier
in Disability, Health, and Happiness in the Shakespearean Body, Routledge (2014) ISBN: 978-1-13-880428-9 Ten Times Happier Open Access version on RADAR
Craik K, 'Poetry and Compassion in Shakespeare's 'A Lover's Complaint'
in The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare's Poetry, Oxford University Press (2013) ISBN: 978-0-19-960774-7
Craik K, Articles on ‘George Puttenham’ and ‘Thomas Wright’
in Alan Stewart and Garrett Sullivan (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Renaissance Literature, Blackwell (2012)
Craik K, The Cambridge Edition of the Collected Works of Ben Jonson (Online Edition) - Masque Archive (including Introduction)
in Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson, Cambridge University Press (2012) ISBN: 9780521782463
Craik, K, Sidney, Shakespeare, and the Elizabethan sonnet and lyric
in The Cambridge History of English Poetry, Cambridge University Press (2010) ISBN: 9780521883061
Craik K, Articles on Hamlet, Antony and Cleopatra and The Merry Wives of Windsor
in Patricia Parker (ed.), The Shakespeare Encyclopedia, Greenwood Press (2009)
Craik K, Revised introduction, including a summary of recent critical interpretations of the play
in Herbert Weil and Judith Weil (ed.), Henry IV Part One, New Cambridge Shakespeare, Cambridge University Press (2007) ISBN: 9780521689502
Craik K, “The Material Point of Poesy”: Reading, Writing and Sensation in Puttenham’s The Arte of English Poesie
in Mary Floyd-Wilson and Garrett Sullivan (ed.), Environment and Embodiment in Early Modern England, Palgrave Macmillan (2007) ISBN: 9781349546589 eISBN: 9780230593022
Craik K, Articles on ‘William Warner’ and ‘Henry Adamson’
in The New Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press (2004)
Craik K, Articles on ‘Sir Walter Ralegh’ and ‘Thomas Coryat’
in The Literary Encyclopedia, Online publication (2002)

Craik K, review of Tudor Liveliness: Vivid Art in Post-Reformation England / by Christina J. Faraday (Paul Mellon Centre, 2023).
Renaissance Studies 38 (5) (2024) pp.744-745 ISSN: 0269-1213 eISSN: 1477-4658
Craik K, review of Shakespeare in Elizabethan Costume: "Period Dress" in Twenty-First-Century Performance / by Ella Hawkins (Arden, 2023) and Performing Restoration Shakespeare / edited by Amanda Eubanks Winkler, Claude Fretz and Richard Schoch (Cambridge University Press, 2023).
Times Literary Supplement (6284) (2023) ISSN: 0307-661X
Craik K, review of The Broadside Ballad in Early Modern England / by Patricia Fumerton (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020) and The Ballad-Singer in Georgian and Victorian London / by Oskar Cox Jensen (Cambridge University Press, 2021)
Times Literary Supplement (6187) (2021) ISSN: 0307-661X
Craik K, review of Paper Monsters: Persona and Literary Culture in Elizabethan England / by Samuel Fallon (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020) and Renaissance Personhood: Materiality, Taxonomy, Process / edited by Kevin Curran (Edinburgh University Press, 2020)
Times Literary Supplement (6138) (2020) ISSN: 0307-661X
Craik K, review of The Afterlife of Shakespeare’s Sonnets / by Jane Kingsley-Smith (Cambridge University Press, 2020)
Times Literary Supplement (6107) (2020) ISSN: 0307-661X
Craik K, review of Impressive Shakespeare: Identity, Authority and the Imprint in Shakespearean Drama / by Harry Newman (Routledge, 2019)
Shakespeare Studies 48 (2020) pp.273-275 ISSN: 0582-9399
Craik K, review of English Authorship and the Early Modern Sublime: Spenser, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jonson / by Patrick Cheney (Cambridge University Press, 2018)
The Review of English Studies 70 (294) (2019) pp.360-362 ISSN: 0034-6551 eISSN: 1471-6968
Craik K, review of Shakespeare’s Sonnets and Poems: A Very Short Introduction / by Jonathan F.S. Post (Oxford University Press, 2017) and The Sonnets: The State of Play / edited by Hannah Crawforth, Elizabeth Scott-Baumann and Clare Whitehead (Arden Bloomsbury, 2017)
Times Literary Supplement (2018) ISSN: 0307-661X
Craik K, review of The Hand on the Shakespearean Stage: Gesture, Touch, and the Spectacle of Dismemberment / by Farah Karim Cooper (Arden, 2016)
Renaissance Quarterly 70 (4) (2017) pp.1662-1664 ISSN: 0034-4338 eISSN: 1935-0236
Craik K, review of The Reformation of Emotions in the Age of Shakespeare / by Steven Mullaney (University of Chicago Press, 2015) and The Renaissance of Emotion: Understanding Affect in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries / edited by Richard Meek and Erin Sullivan (Manchester University Press, 2015)
Renaissance Quarterly 69 (4) (2016) pp.1584-1586 ISSN: 0034-4338 eISSN: 1935-0236
Craik K, review of Feeling Pleasures: The Sense of Touch in Renaissance England / by Joe Moshenka (Cambridge University Press, 2014)
Times Literary Supplement (2015) ISSN: 0307-661X
Craik K, review of The Hamlet Doctrine / by Simon Critchley and Jamieson Webster (Verso, 2013)
Times Literary Supplement (2014) ISSN: 0307-661X
Craik K, review of Literature and Popular Culture in Early Modern England
Textual Practice 26 (2012) pp.1123-1126 ISSN: 0950-236X eISSN: 1470-1308
Craik K, review of The Ephemeral History of Perfume Scent and Sense in Early Modem England
Times Literary Supplement (2012) pp.26-26 ISSN: 0307-661X
Craik K, review of In and Out of the Marital Bed: Seeing Sex in Renaissance Europe
Times Literary Supplement (2011) pp.23-23 ISSN: 0307-661X
Craik K, review of The Textuality and Materiality of Reading in Early Modern England
The Review of English Studies 62 (2011) pp.818-819 ISSN: 0034-6551 eISSN: 1471-6968
Craik K, review of Lovesickness and Gender in Early Modern English Literature
Times Literary Supplement (2009) pp.25-25 ISSN: 0307-661X
Craik K, review of Shakespeare, Love and Service
Times Literary Supplement (2009) pp.25-25 ISSN: 0307-661X
Craik K, review of The Birth of Mankind Otherwise Named, the Womans Book
Times Literary Supplement (2009) pp.24-24 ISSN: 0307-661X
Craik K, review of Scenes of Instruction - in Renaissance Romance
Times Literary Supplement (2008) pp.29-29 ISSN: 0307-661X
Craik K, review of Shylock Is Shakespeare
Times Literary Supplement (2007) pp.24-24 ISSN: 0307-661X

Craik KA, Britland K, Masque archive (with headnote) ,
(2014)
Craik K, 'The awakening', 'Apnoea' and 'Unforgotten' [poems published in The Harvard Review] ,

Professional information

Memberships of professional bodies

Fellow of the English Association
Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
Member of the AHRC Peer Review College

Conferences

Selected presentations:

‘What can Literature Contribute to Moral Education?’, Moral Education: A Lost or Missing Dimension? (Iqra University, Karachi, Pakistan, 2024)
Abject Science: 'O’er-doing it: Technologies of the Lifelike in Hamlet' (Shakespeare Association of America, Minneapolis, April 2023)
Early Modern Seminar: 'Lifelikeness and Deathlikeness in Shakespeare' (Faculty of English, University of Oxford, April, 2022)
Renaissance Seminar: 'Light and Lifelikeness in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost' (Dept of English, De Montford University, Feb 2022)
‘Creative Criticism and the Marina Project’, Critical/Creative Summit (University of East Anglia, 2019)
Renaissance Society of America: 'Printing and artificial life in Shakespeare’s Sonnets' (March 2019)
'The Marina Project’, Radical Mischief: Theatre, Thought, Politics (RSC/University of Birmingham, 2018)
‘Being Breathed: from King Lear to Clinical Medicine’, The Life of Breath: History, Texts, Contexts (University of Durham, 2018)
‘Life-like Angelo’, Emotions and Affect in the Renaissance (Graduate Center, CUNY, 2018)
Literature and Medicine seminar, University of Oxford:'The Marina Project' (June 2016)
Early Modern Seminar, University of Oxford: 'Poetry, Anatomy, Presence' (March 2016)
Early Modern Seminar, University of Cambridge: 'Poetry, Anatomy, Presence' (October 2015)
‘Shakespeare and the Emotions’, Department of English, University of Hull (2015)
Faculty of Classics, University of Oxford: 'Rhetoric and Wonder in Shakespeare's Sonnets’ (October 2014)
‘Passionate Shakespeare’, International Shakespeare Conference, Stratford-upon-Avon (2014)
Research Seminar, LMU Munich: 'Shakespeare's Coriolanus and the Compassionate Voice' (February 2014)
Early Modern Seminar, Sussex University: 'Sublime Shakespeare' (January 2014)
The Blood Conference, Oxford University: 'Blood Brothers' (January 2014)
Reading and Health in Early Modern Europe (1500-1800), Newcastle University: Keynote lecture (July 2013)
Shakespeare and the Senses, Shakespeare's Globe: 'Touching Stories' (2011)
Popular Culture in the Early Modern World, University of Sussex: ‘Shakespeare’s Soldiers’ (2007)
University of Oxford, Renaissance Graduate Seminar; and University of Hull, Graduate Seminar: ‘Reading, Writing and Sensation in Early Modern England’ (2005)
Minds and Bodies: Renaissance Ways of Knowing Centre for Research in Renaissance Studies, Roehampton University: ‘Renaissance Experiences of Reading’ (2004)
Shakespeare Association of America: ‘“The Material Point of Poesy”: Reading, Writing and Sensation in Puttenham’s The Arte of English Poesie’ (2004)

Conferences and seminars organised:

Shakespeare's Alive! (Shakespeare Association of America, Online, April 2022)
'Class and Emotion in Shakespeare', Shakespeare Association of America, Toronto (March 2013)
'Passionate Shakespeare', International Shakespeare Congress, Stratford-upon-Avon (August 2012)
'Early Modern Women', Oxford Brookes University, June 2010
‘Tudor Medicine and the Body’, Hampton Court Palace, June 2009
Shakespeare Association of America, Philadelphia, April 2006 ‘Shakespearean Sensations’, co-organised with Dr Tanya Pollard (Brooklyn College, CUNY)