Michelle O'Callaghan

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+44 (0) 118 378 7003
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Professor
Specialism
Early Modern Literature
- Head of Department
Office
EM 109Building location
Edith MorleyAreas of interest
My primary research interest is early modern literature and culture, including literature and politics, print and manuscript culture, literature and sociability, pastoral, satire, and travel-writing.
Teaching
Within the department I convene modules in:
- Renaissance Texts and Cultures
- Renaissance Women's Writing
I also contribute to courses in:
- Genre and Context: The Renaissance Stage
- Poetry in English
Research centres and groups
Early Modern Research Centre
Research projects
I research and publish on a range of topics in early modern literature and culture. My first two books, The Shepheards Nation: Jacobean Spenserians and Early Stuart Political Culture (Oxford, 2000) and The English Wits: Literature and Sociability in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2007), were interested in how different early modern communities used literature to shape identities and for political ends, and looked in particular at practices of collaboration. My most recent book, Thomas Middleton, Renaissance Dramatist (Edinburgh, 2007), explores Middleton's inventive use of stagecraft in relation to early modern forms of wit. I am also part of the Early Modern Women's Research Network which brings together academics in Australia, UK, and the States.
Editing has been a developing area of research for me, particularly in relation to the new technologies. I have recently produced a searchable digital edition of selected verse miscellanies printed in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Verse Miscellanies Online. These verse miscellanies or poetry anthologies helped to shape the history of English poetry. They can tell us much about how literary tastes developed and changed over the course of the English Renaissance and the growth of the book trade. Work on this digital edition began in March 2011 funded by a British Academy Research Development Award, and has involved collaboration with various bodies, including the Bodleian Digital Library, Oxford University Computing Services, and the Digital Humanities Department at King's College, London. I am currently working on a book project to accompany the digital edition, provisionally entitled, Making Poetry: Print Culture and the Verse Miscellany in Renaissance England
I am the director of the Early Modern Research Centre (EMRC), a very active international centre for early modern studies. The EMRC hosts a very popular annual international and interdisciplinary conference each July, as well as a range of other events, and also hosts various research projects. To see who else is involved in the EMRC, the research that we do, and the events that we host, please visit the Centre's website, where you can find details of current and past conferences, events, research activities, and opportunities for postgraduate study.
I convene and teach undergraduate modules in early modern literature and drama and convene the MA (Res) in Early Modern Literature and Drama. I have supervised dissertations on a range of early modern topics, and welcome enquiries from those interested in pursuing early modern studies at postgraduate level.
Publications
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O'Callaghan, M.
ORCID: 0000-0001-6084-0122 (2023) Contexts for circulation: universities, Inns of Court, households and professional circles. In: Smyth, A. , (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of the History of the Book in Early Modern England. Oxford University Press pp. 474-C25P44. ISBN: 9780198846239 | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198846239.013.25
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O'Callaghan, M.
ORCID: 0000-0001-6084-0122 (2023) How Isabella Whitney read “Her” Christine de Pizan. Women's Writing ISSN: 1747-5848
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O'Callaghan, M.
ORCID: 0000-0001-6084-0122 (2022) Satire. In: Bates, C. and Cheney, P. , (eds.) Sixteenth-Century British Poetry. The Oxford History of Poetry in English , 4. Oxford University Press , Oxford. pp. 229-243. ISBN: 9780198830696 | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198830696.003.0013
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O'Callaghan, M.
ORCID: 0000-0001-6084-0122 (2022) London and the book trade: Isabella Whitney, Jane Anger, and the 'Maydens of London'. In: Scott-Baumann, E. , Clarke, D. , Ross, S. , (eds.) The Oxford handbook of early modern women's writing in English, 1540-1700. Oxford University Press , Oxford. pp. 291-303. ISBN: 9780198860631
- Smith, R. , Ross, S. , O'Callaghan, M. , Arthur, J. , Whitelaw, M. (2021) Early Modern Women’s Complaint Poetry Index. In: Smith, R. , Ross, S. , O'Callaghan, M. , Arthur, J. , Whitelaw, M. , (eds.) Australian National University
- O'Callaghan, M. (2020) Crafting poetry anthologies and cultures of recreation in Renaissance England. Crafting Poetry Anthologies in Renaissance England: Early Modern Cultures of Recreation. Cambridge University Press , Cambridge. ISBN: 9781108867412 | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1017/9781108867412
- O'Callaghan, M. (2019) ‘My printer must, haue somwhat to his share’: Isabella Whitney, Richard Jones, and crafting books. Women's Writing , 26 pp. 15-34. ISSN: 1747-5848 | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09699082.2019.1534571
- O'Callaghan, M. (2019) ‘Good ladies be working’: singing at work in Tudor woman’s song. Huntington Library Quarterly , 82 (1). pp. 107-126. ISSN: 1544-399X | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/hlq.2019.0005
- Smith, R. , O'Callaghan, M. , Ross, S. (2018) Complaint. In: Bates, C. , (eds.) A Companion to Renaissance Poetry. Wiley Blackwell , Oxford. pp. 339-352. ISBN: 9781118585191
- O'Callaghan, M. (2018) Verse satire. In: Bates, C. , (eds.) A Companion to Renaissance Poetry. Wiley Blackwell , Oxford. pp. 389-400. ISBN: 9781118585191
- O'Callaghan, M. (2017) Collecting verse: “significant shape” and the paper-book in the early seventeenth century. Huntington Library Quarterly , 80 (2). pp. 309-324. ISSN: 1544-399X | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/hlq.2017.0018
- O'Callaghan, M. (2016) "An uncivill scurrilous letter": 'womanish brabb[l]es' and the letter of affront. In: Daybell, J. and Gordon, A. , (eds.) Cultures of Correspondence in Early Modern Britain. Material Texts University of Pennsylvania Press , Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. pp. 169-185. ISBN: 9780812248258
- O'Callaghan, M. (2016) A mirror for magistrates: Richard Niccols' 'Sir Thomas Overburies Vision (1616)'. A Mirror for Magistrates in Context: Literature, History, and Politics in Early Modern England. Cambridge University Press , Cambridge. pp. 181-196. ISBN: 9781107104358
- O'Callaghan, M. (2015) “Jests, stolne from the Temples Revels”: the Inns of Court revels and early modern drama. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature , 31 pp. 227-252. ISSN: 0940-0478
- O'Callaghan, M. (2014) The “Great Queen of Lightninge Flashes”: the transmission of female-voiced burlesque poetry in the early seventeenth century. In: Pender, P. and Smith, R. , (eds.) Material Cultures of Early Modern Women’s Writing. Early Modern Literature in History Palgrave Macmillan UK , Basingstoke and New York. pp. 99-117. ISBN: 9781137342430 | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9781137342430
- O'Callaghan, M. (2011) 'Those Lyrick Feasts, made at the Sun, the Dog, the triple Tunne': going clubbing with Ben Jonson. In: Cain , T. and Connolly, R. , (eds.) 'Lords of Wine and Oile': Community and Conviviality in Robert Herrick. Oxford University Press pp. 83-105. ISBN: 9780199604777
- O'Callaghan, M. (2010) Textual gatherings: print, community and verse miscellanies in early modern England. Early Modern Culture , 8 ISSN: 1939-0246
- O'Callaghan, M. (2010) Pastoral. In: Hattaway, M. , (eds.) A new companion to English renaissance literature and culture. , 2. Wiley-Blackwell pp. 225-237. ISBN: 9781405187626
- O'Callaghan, M. (2010) Publication: print and manuscript. In: Hattaway, M. , (eds.) A new companion to English renaissance literature and culture. , 1. Wiley-Blackwell pp. 160-176. ISBN: 9781405187626
- O'Callaghan, M. (2010) Friends, collaborators, and rivals. In: Sanders, J. , (eds.) Ben Jonson in context. Cambridge University Press , UK. pp. 48-56. ISBN: 9780521895712
- O'Callaghan, M. (2010) Spenser’s literary influence. In: McCabe, R. , (eds.) The Oxford handbook of Edmund Spenser. Oxford handbooks of literature Oxford University Press , UK. pp. 664-683. ISBN: 9780199227365
- O'Callaghan, M. (2009) The duties of societies: literature, friendship and community. In: Healy, M. and Healy, T. , (eds.) Renaissance Transformations: The Making of English Writing 1500-1650. Edinburgh University Press , Edinburgh. pp. 97-111. ISBN: 9780748638734
- O'Callaghan, M. (2009) 'Thomas the Scholer' versus 'John the Sculler': defining popular culture in the early Seventeenth Century. In: Dimmock, M. and Hadfield, A. , (eds.) Literature and Popular Culture in Early Modern England. Ashgate , Aldershot. pp. 45-56. ISBN: 9780754665809
- O'Callaghan, M. (2009) Thomas Middleton, Renaissance dramatist. Edinburgh University Press , Edinburgh. pp 209. ISBN: 9780748627806
- O'Callaghan, M. (2009) Tavern and library: working with Ben Jonson. In: Sullivan, C. and Harper, G. , (eds.) Authors at Work: the Creative Environment. Essays and Studies Boydell & Brewer ISBN: 9781843841951
- O'Callaghan, M. (2007) Dreaming the dead: ghosts and history in the early seventeenth century. In: Wiseman, S. , Hodgkin, K. , O'Callaghan, M. , (eds.) Reading the early modern dream: the terrors of the night. Routledge , London. pp. 81-95. ISBN: 9780415386012
- Wiseman, S. , Hodgkin, K. , O'Callaghan, M. , eds. (2007) Reading the early modern dream: the terrors of the night. Routledge , London. pp 182. ISBN: 9780415386012
- O'Callaghan, M. (2006) Performing politics: the circulation of the “Parliament Fart”. Huntington Library Quarterly , 69 (1). pp. 121-138. ISSN: 1544-399X | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1525/hlq.2006.69.1.121
- O'Callaghan, M. (2006) The English wits: literature and sociability in early modern England. Cambridge University Press , Cambridge. pp 242. ISBN: 9780521860840