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PUBLICATIONS

Shakespeare and Science
Prophetic Futures
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This book is based on the postmedieval journal special issue Prophetic Futures. It calls for renewed attention to prophecy and temporality, challenging in the process critical lenses that adhere to strict dualities of medieval/modern, superstitious/rationalized, and other problematic dyads that occlude our understanding of vatic language. The language, texts, and bodies of prophecy challenge commonplaces about a disenchanted modernity and point the way to new critical approaches to texts out of time. Previously published in postmedieval Volume 10, issue 1, March 2019...(more)

With the recent turn to science studies and interdisciplinary research in Shakespearean scholarship, Shakespeare and Science: A Dictionary, provides a pedagogical resource for students and scholars. In charting Shakespeare's engagement with natural philosophical discourse, this edition shapes the future of Shakespearean scholarship and pedagogy significantly, appealing to students entering the field and current scholars in interdisciplinary research on the topic alongside the non-professional reader seeking to understand Shakespeare's language and early modern scientific practices...(more)

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Instinct, Knowledge and Occult Science on the Early Modern English Stage

In Instinct, Knowledge and Occult Science on the Early Modern English Stage, Katherine Walker focuses on embodied experiences in the theater and the debates within the sciences that eventually fell out of favor but interlaced “gut feelings” with observational practice. She examines understudied occult sciences, looking to genres such as almanacs, witchcraft pamphlets and demonologies. As Walker argues, the early modern discourse of instinct registers shifting appraisals of the body’s role in making new knowledge. Unlike reason, instinct allowed anyone—a witch, an animal or a queen—to interpret a complex, animate environment. This knowledge was not only a seductive idea, but also opened up a range of debates on the limits of human cognition, the rights of marginalised individuals to offer new understanding, and the contours of what we can know about the environment. (more)

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