Dr Jane Kingsley-Smith

 

Job Title: Senior Lecturer (English Literature) Qualifications: PHD Telephone: +44 (0)20 8392 3347 Email Address: J.Kingsley-smith@rus.roehampton.ac.uk

Academic Background

I studied for my first degree at Oriel College, Oxford and for my PhD at the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon, under the supervision of Stanley Wells.

I subsequently taught on undergraduate programmes at the universities of Warwick, Salford and Hull, before coming to Roehampton in 2005.

Research Interests

My main research interest is Shakespeare in his historical and cultural context. This was the subject of my PhD and of my first monograph, Shakespeare's Drama of Exile published by Palgrave in 2003. Subsequently, I have published on a range of topics, including The Tempest, representations of Shakespeare in popular cinema including Shakespeare in Love, and Cupid on the Shakespearean stage. I also wrote the introduction to the new Penguin edition of Henry VI Part One. I regularly give papers at the International Shakespeare Conference and the British Shakespeare Association Conference. I am also a guest lecturer at Shakespeare's Globe theatre.

Whilst I maintain a keen interest in teaching and scholarship in Shakespeare studies, my research has also broadened out into the field of early modern literature and its relation to classical mythology and to the visual arts. My next book considers representations of Cupid in early modern England, exploring not only the range of desires he might represent/inspire, but also the acts of trangression performed in his name, disrupting categories of gender, class, hierarchy and religious difference. I am particularly interested in the ways in which an Italian Roman Catholic and pagan deity like Cupid was reinvented by post-Reformation England. Although the focus of the book will be literature, it will also consider Cupid's representation in contemporary paintings, emblems, tapestry, embroidery and book illustrations.

In April 2007, I was awarded a one-year Leverhulme Research Fellowship in order to complete this book.

Teaching Interests

I teach on a wide range of undergraduate courses at Roehampton, including "Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist", "Early Modern Literature", and "Literature and Plague", a new module I devised which considers plague-texts from Boccaccio's Decameron to Danny Boyle's film 28 Days Later.

I have also been responsible for co-writing a new MA at Roehampton called Early Modern Literature and Culture, 1500-1700 which combines the interests of a range of staff across the university.

Main publications

Books

Shakespeare’s Drama of Exile, monograph published by Palgrave (2003)

York Notes Advanced: ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore (August 2007)

The Poor Man’s Comfort by Robert Daborne, edited for the Globe Quartos series (Nick Hern, 2005)

Articles

Introduction to the new Penguin edition of Henry VI, Part One (2005)

‘The Tempest’s Forgotten Exile’ in Shakespeare Survey 54 (2001)

‘Cupid, Idolatry and Iconoclasm in Sidney’s Arcadia’, Studies in English Literature (Winter 2008)

‘Love’s Labour’s Scorned: Cupid’s Absence on the Shakespearean Stage’, Cahiers Elisabéthains (Spring 2008)

‘Sidney, Cinthio and Painter: A New Source for Sidney’s Arcadia’ in Review of English Studies 57 (April 2006), 169-75

‘Shakespearean Authorship in Popular British Cinema’, Literature/Film Quarterly 30 (2002), reprinted in Shakespeare Into Film ed. James M. Welsh (New York, 2002)

Undergraduate courses taught at Roehampton:

English Literature

Postgraduate courses taught at Roehampton:

Early Modern Literature and Culture