Abigail specialises in popular culture, conversion, and life writing in the early modern period.
I joined the department of English and Creative Writing at Goldsmiths as a Lecturer in Early Modern Literature and Culture in 2017 having previously worked at the universities of St Andrews, Leeds, and York. I am a member of the executive committee of the International Spenser Society and a reviews editor for The Spenser Review. I am chair of the Goldsmiths Prize 2024.
I currently convene the modules Reading the Past: Bede to Sterne (EN52414A), Shakespeare(s): Then and Now (EN52211D) and Writing Lives (EN53407A).
I welcome research projects in the following areas:
Conversion Narratives
Early Modern Life Writing
Conversion and drama
Edmund Spenser
Early Modern Animal Studies
Early Modern Popular Culture
Early Modern Poetry and Prose
My work considers the intersection of culture and form in the early modern period. I am particularly interested in texts that reside outside of the canon and outside of perceived notions of the literary. These include conversion narratives (religious life writing recounting a change of faith or intensification of religious feeling) and popular print. In tandem, I also work on elite writers who self-consciously borrow from or imitate aspects of popular culture. My first book, Conversion Narratives in Early Modern England: Tales of Turning (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), is a study of the rhetorical tropes and narrative typologies which characterise conversion narratives in the years 1580-1660. I am currently working on two book projects. The Architecture of Conversion and the Early Modern Stage explores drama's engagement with the legacy of the Reformation through the lens of the architecture of conversion. It argues that in the 1590s and early 1600s dramatists made imaginative use of the complex dilemmas posed by such converted structures, which included playhouses, drawing attention to the uncomfortable and inconvenient instabilities that they manifest. Spenser’s Popular Voices: Culture and Play focuses on Spenser’s interest in cultural play and his adoption of models and practices associated with non-elite modes of storytelling.
2018:
- Conversion Narratives in Early Modern England: Tales of Turning
Palgrave Macmillan (2018): A book-length study of conversion narratives from 1580-1660 focusing on the relationship between conversion and rhetoric.
2014:
- Research Companion to Popular Culture in Early Modern England
Ashgate (2014): Edited collection bringing together work on popular culture in early modern England.
2017:
‘Dreaming Converts in the Seventeenth Century: The Case of Philip Dandulo and Thomas Warmstry’s The Baptized Turk
Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 17.1 (2017): Exploration of a dream embedded in the description of the baptism and conversion of a Muslim man in early modern London.
2014:
‘Managing Copiousness for Pleasure and Profit: William Painter’s Palace of Pleasure’
Renaissance Studies 28 (2014): Article analysing the copiousness of William Painter's collection of novelle The Palace of Pleasure.
2023:
‘Come to my house: The Architecture of Conversion and Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta’
Modern Philology 120 (2023)
Stenner, Rachel and Shinn, Abigail. 2024. Edmund Spenser and Animal Life. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9783031426407
Shinn, Abigail. 2018. Conversion Narratives in Early Modern England: Tales of Turning. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9783319965772
Shinn, Abigail; Hadfied, Andrew and Dimmock, Matthew, eds. 2014. The Ashgate Research Companion to Popular Culture in Early Modern England. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate. ISBN 9781409436843
Shinn, Abigail and Vine, Angus, eds. 2014. The Copious Text: Encyclopaedic Books in Early Modern England, Renaissance Studies, 28(2). 0269-1213
Shinn, Abigail and Mazur, Peter, eds. 2013. Narrating Conversion in the Early Modern World, Journal of Early Modern History, (17). 1385-3783
Shinn, Abigail. 2024. Spenser’s ‘apish crue’: Aping in Prosopopoia or Mother Hubberds Tale. In: Rachel Stenner and Abigail Shinn, eds. Edmund Spenser and Animal Life. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave, pp. 117-138. ISBN 9783031426407
Shinn, Abigail. 2024. Animal/fable. In: Charlotte Scott, ed. Shakespeare/Nature: Contemporary Readings in the Human and Non-human. London: Bloomsbury, pp. 189-204. ISBN 9781350259836
Shinn, Abigail. 2023. Conversion. In: Margaret King, ed. Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Shinn, Abigail. 2023. Spenser's Popular Pastoral: Hodgepodges and Genre Trouble in The Shepheardes Calender. Sillages Critique(34), ISSN 1272-3819
Shinn, Abigail. 2023. “All poetry is born of play”: Spenser with Johan Huizinga. Spenser Studies, 37, pp. 265-281. ISSN 0195-9468
Shinn, Abigail. 2023. 'Come to my house': The Architecture of Conversion and Marlowe's The Jew of Malta. Modern Philology, 120(4), pp. 419-443. ISSN 0026-8232
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