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Overview

Dr Mark Chambers

Assistant Professor


Affiliations
Affiliation
Assistant Professor in the Department of English Studies
Member of the Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies

Biography

Tudor Theatre: Vol. 6 (Collection THETA): Amazon.co.uk: Centre D'Etudes: Books

Overview and Research
Performing Disability in Medieval and Early Modern Britain (ARC Humanities, 2024)

I am Assistant Professor in the department, providing lecturing, seminar teaching and tutorials on a range of undergraduate and postgraduate modules. My primary research interest is in medieval and early Tudor drama, and especially interdisciplinary approaches to premodern performance history. I also have research interest in late medieval material culture (e.g. cloth and clothing) and late medieval language contact. 

My book on Performing Disability in Medieval and Early Modern Britain was published by ARC Humanities Press in the spring of 2024. This major study of performance history examines the nature and socialisation of 'disabled' performers in the medieval and early Tudor records. It takes a new approach to the study of the evidence for, and conceptualisation of 'impairment', as a performative act, in the premodern records and play texts. The study sheds new light on historic performance culture, reflecting on what that culture might tell us about the continued 'othering' of disability in society today. For more information, see the ARC Humanities website here

I am also co-editing (with Professor John McKinnell) the Records of Early English Drama series for County Durham. The first traunch of this substantial collection of records for performance in the county are due to be published by REED, Toronto within the next two years (https://ereed.library.utoronto.ca/). For more on this long-running international series, see https://reed.utoronto.ca/.

From, 2012-13, I was a Teaching Fellow at The University of Birmingham. I also acted as Research Consultant on the Lexis of Cloth and Clothing Project based at the University of Westminster, London, UK (http://lexisproject.arts.manchester.ac.uk/index.html). I have also served as Research Assistant on a parallel, Leverhulme-funded project: the Medieval Dress and Textile Vocabulary in Unpublished Sources Project, in collaboration with Professor Louise Sylvester and Professor Gale Owen-Crocker.

I have published widely on material culture and historical philology and continue conducting research on fashion and sumptuary legislation in the 14th through the 16th centuries, especially the lexicology of medieval fashion and dress.

Teaching

I provide lecturing, seminar and tutorial teaching, and mentoring on a number of undergraduate modules, including Intro to Drama, Romance and the Literature of Chivalry, Epic and the Literature of Legend, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Renaissance Literature, Medieval Literature, and Medieval French Literature, as well as on a number of postgraduate modules. From next year, I will be offering a new special-topic seminar on 'Stagecraft and Subversion in the Early English Drama'.

Previous to joining the Department at Durham in 2013, I provided lecturing and further teaching, primarily on medieval and Renaissance English language and literature, at the University of Durham (2001-2), Trinity College Dublin, the University of Westminster, and the University of Birmingham, as well as the distance learning MA at the University of Leicester. 

Research interests

  • Early English Drama
  • Late-Medieval Language Contact
  • Medieval Clothing and Fashion

Publications

Chapter in book

Conference Paper

Edited book

Journal Article