Faculty in the Centre publish on a wide range of subjects across medieval and early modern literature and culture. Our research spans five key areas:
Religion
Early modern religion and the sectarian imagination; racial and religious difference, particularly in reference to Islam; the Bible; late-medieval devotional literature and practices; vernacular theology.
Science, Medicine and the Body
Cultural theory of the body; prostheses; medicine, science and literature; lifecycle stages; anthropomorphism; Hermeticism and alchemy; Neoplatonism; Paracelsianism; the English and Dutch East India Companies and scientific advancement; the history of science; the history of the senses; literary practices and the body.
Literature, Politics and Nation
Republicanism; Irish literature; rhetoric and poetic theory; literature in the English civil war; writing by women; the political stage; travel writing and colonialism; Britain and Britishness; Restoration culture and the Glorious Revolution; literature and law.
Visual and Material Cultures
Drama and visual culture; iconoclasm and Reformation word and image; visual perception and spectatorship; patronage and the transmission of continental influences; music, sound and domestic space; 16th- and 17th-century architecture; concepts of ‘making’ and materiality.
Book History and the Archive
Libraries and intellectual culture; histories of reading, including affective and embodied reading practices; history of the book; the archive and periodization; the archive in ruins; literary remains, relics and reconstruction; antiquarianism; manuscript culture; editing.
Authors studied across these areas include Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton, Marlowe, Lanyer, Middleton, Bacon, Donne, Ficino, Montaigne, Newton, Chaucer, Lydgate and Pecock.
We are proud to announce that we have recently secured an AHRC collaborative doctoral award (between the Centre for Early Modern Studies at Sussex and the National Trust at Petworth House) in order to investigate a unique collection of early play quartos purchased by the Ninth and Tenth Earls of Northumberland and housed at Petworth. See our Sussex CEMS and Petworth House page for more information.
The Centre organises a regular programme of evening speakers on a range of literary, art history and history topics. Additionally we hold one day events, postgraduate conferences and international conferences. See our events page for more information.
See the links on the left for further information about projects, publications and PhD research within the Centre.
Ros's perspective
'Doing a DPhil in English Literature at Sussex has been the happiest four years of my life so far. The supervision, research facilities and additional training were excellent. If your interest is the Early Modern period, CEMS makes Sussex a particularly great place to do a DPhil. CEMS organises regular lectures, conferences and social events, allowing postgraduate researchers and faculty to exchange knowledge and ideas, get to know each other, and take an interest in each others' research. There's a real concentration of talent and expertise focused in CEMS – some of the best Early Modern specialists in the country are based here – and the events I've enjoyed have always been lively, friendly and well-attended.'
Dr Ros Barber
PhD graduate