Loughborough University

Post-Doc, English & Drama

Other Affiliations: University of Worcester, Institute of Humanities and Creative Arts

Part-time Lecturer

Thesis Title: 'Those Sweet and Benign Humours that Nature Sends Monthly': Accounting for Menstruation in Early-Modern England

About

My research analyses the ways that menstruation and other occasions of female bleeding were accounted for in early-modern England, from Menarche to Menopause. I am always happy to hear from, and share ideas with, anyone else working in related fields.

I am a keen teacher and have taught on a range of modules including Introduction to Poetry 1 and 2, Critical Studies 2, Tutorial Courses, Library Skills, and British Drama 1576-1737.

In this academic year, I have taught a third year Renaissance Poetry module for the University of Worcester, through a series of weekly lectures and seminars, and currently teaching on the Introduction to the Short Story and the Introduction to the Short Narrative first year modules at Loughborough University. I am also supervising an undergraduate dissertation on masculinity in Shakespeare's plays. 

Publications:

Articles

‘“Thy Righteousness is but a Menstrual Clout”: Sanitary Protection and Prejudice in Early-Modern England', Early Modern Woman: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 3 (2008), 1-26
http://www.emwjournal.umd.edu/volume3contents.html


‘When Menopause is not Climacteric’, Notes and Queries (2012) doi: 10.1093/notesj/gjs048 First published online: March 30, 2012
<http://nq.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/03/30/notesj.gjs048.full.pdf+html&gt;

Book chapter

‘Only Kept up by the Credulous and Ignorant’: Eighteenth-Century Responses to the ‘Poisonous’ Nature of Menstrual blood, in Great Expectations: Futurity in the Long Eighteenth Century, ed by Mascha Hansen and Jürgen Klein (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2012), forthcoming

Reviews

Review of Performing Maternity in Early Modern England, ed. by Kathryn M. Moncrief and Kathryn Read McPherson (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007) in The Seventeenth Century, 25.1 (2010), 184-85.

Review of Oliva Sabuco de Nantes Barrera, The True Medicine, edited and translated by Gianna Pomata (Toronto: Center for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2010) in Social History of Medicine 24.2 (2011), 531-32
http://shm.oxfordjournals.org/content/24/2/531.full?sid=0ae62bf1-3b66-4c1f-a19c-5072b16d5b74

Review of Jennifer Munroe, ‘“My innocent diversion of gardening”: Mary Somerset’s plants’ in the Journal of Literature and Science, 4.1 (2011), 78-9 ISSN 1754-646X
PDF available at http://literatureandscience.research.glam.ac.uk/journal/reviews&gt;

Review of Irma Taavitsainen and Päivi Pahta (eds), Medical Writing in Early Modern English, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011, in Social History of Medicine (published online November 11, 2011: DOI 10.1093/shm/hkr157)
http://shm.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/11/11/shm.hkr157.extract

Papers given

‘A Difficulty beyond Human Understanding’: The Medical Debate about Menstruation in the Eighteenth Century
Given at the BSECS annual conference, Oxford, January 2008 and WSG 1558 -1837, London, January 2008.

‘To all Vertuous and Modest-Minded Women’: The Woman’s Health Manual into the Eighteenth Century.
Given at BSECS post-graduate conference, Winchester, June 2008

'Having the Benefit of Nature': The Experience of Menarche in Early-Modern England
Given at the University of Montreal, March 09 and Durham University, May 09

Rereading Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure in Scientific Medical Context
Given at The British Society for Science and Literature Annual Conference, Newcastle, April 2010.

Accounting for Menstruation in Early-Modern England
Given at De Partu History of Childbirth Research Group, Manchester University, June 2010

‘You’ll Wish Yourself in the Greensickness in a Month’: Emotions and Menarche in Early-Modern England.  British Society for Eighteenth Century Studies, St Hugh’s College, Oxford, January 2011

‘Only kept up by the credulous and ignorant’: eighteenth-century responses to the ‘poisonous’ nature of menstrual blood. A Colloquium in Memoriam Paul-Gabriel Boucé, Alfried Krupp Kolleg, University of Greifswald, Germany, February 2011.

‘“The fresh spring of young virginity”: Rereading the Short Stories of Aphra Behn in their Seventeenth-Century Medical Context’. Aphra Behn Europe, 5th Biennial Conference ‘Aphra Behn in her Seventeenth-Century Contexts’ at Loughborough University, April 2012

Contact Information