Andrew Brown

Education
·         BA, York University
·         MA, McGill University
·         PhD, Yale University

Remarks

Andrew S. Brown’s research focuses on the literature, politics, and culture of early modern England (ca. 1550-1700). He was previously the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) Digital Humanities Network Postdoctoral Fellow at the Jackman Humanities Institute, University of Toronto. His current book project, Persons and Representation in Early Modern Drama (forthcoming from Oxford University Press), asks: how did the stage contribute to the idea that we can authorize people not just to speak and act on our behalf, but to stand in for us and take on aspects of our personhood? He is also at work on a second long-term project that explores how early modern English literature, law, and cartography developed a new concept of water as a vital form of infrastructure—a concept that extended across the Atlantic, and which continues to shape disputes over water rights today. He welcomes inquiries about graduate student supervision on topics related to early modern studies, law and literature, and the history of the book.

Selected Publications

• “Pericles and the Sea of Things,” Shakespearean International Yearbook 20 (2023), 93–113.
• “Ridiculous Subjects: Coriolanus, Popular Representation, and the Roman Tribunes in Early Modern Drama,” English Literary Renaissance 52.2 (2022), 229–59.
• “Quakerism, Metadiscourse, and ‘Paradise Found,’” Studies in Philology 117.3 (2020), 606–26.
• “Marina and the Market for Shakespeare in Eighteenth-Century Performance,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 51.2 (2018), 163–78.
• “‘The Minstrelsy of Heaven’: Representation and the Politics of Lyric in Paradise Lost,” Milton Studies 57 (2016), 63–92. Albert C. Labriola Award for distinguished article by a graduate student, Milton Society of America.
• “‘Being Unseminared’: Pleasure, Instruction, and Playing the Queen in Anthony and Cleopatra,” in Shakespeare and Consciousness, ed. Paul Budra and Clifford Werier (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 165–89.

Selected Presentations

• “The Multitudinous Tongue: Performance, Populism, and the Taste of Representation in William Shakespeare’s Coriolanus,” invited presentation for “Reimagining Representation: Literature and Political Thought in Early Modernity” (University of Oklahoma, 23 Feb. 2024).
• “Water as Border in The Sea Voyage,” guest lecture for EMSP 2490: “Ideas of the Sea & Seafaring” (University of King’s College, 26 Oct. 2023).
• “Another Flood of Tears: Climate Feelings and Paradise Lost,” Thirteenth International Milton Symposium (University of Toronto, 11 Jun. 2023).
• “Pax Londinii: Commercial Peace and the Global City in The Triumphs of Peace (1620),” Shakespeare Association of America (SAA) Annual Conference (Minneapolis, 30 Mar. 2023).
• “Public Office and the Weight of Personation in Samson Agonistes,” invited presentation for the Sixteenth Annual Canada Milton Seminar (University of Toronto, 28 May 2022).
• “Pericles and the Sea of Things,” Department of English Speaker Series (Dalhousie University, 11 Mar. 2022).
• “Blue-Green Infrastructure and the Invention of the Swamp in Early Modern Texts,” Renaissance Society of America (RSA) Annual Meeting (remote presentation, 21 Apr. 2021).
• “Liquid Borders and Atlantic Insularity in The Sea Voyage,” SAA Annual Conference (remote seminar, 2 Apr. 2021).
• “Black Gold and Ice Archives in Early Modern Arctic Narratives,” Modern Language Association (MLA) Annual Conference (remote presentation, 8 Jan. 2021).
• “Collaboration Across the Multi-Campus University” (with Elizabeth Parke), Digital Humanities: Collaboration Conference, University of British Columbia-Vancouver (remote roundtable, 29 Oct. 2020).

Selected Awards

• SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship (awarded but not held), 2020–22
• Folger Institute Grant-in-Aid for “Political Personhood” symposium, 2019
• Albert C. Labriola Award, Milton Society of America, 2016
• SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, 2013–15
• SSHRC MA Fellowship, 2010–11