Dr Abigail Shinn

Abigail specialises in popular culture, conversion, and life writing in the early modern period.

Staff details

Position

Lecturer

Department

English and Creative Writing

Email

A.Shinn (@gold.ac.uk)

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.

Academic qualifications

PhD: ‘Edmund Spenser and the Popular Press’ (Sussex) 2010
MA in Early Modern Literature and Culture (Sussex) 2006
BA Hons English Literature (Sussex) 2005

Teaching and supervision

I currently convene the modules Shakespeare(s): Then and Now (EN52211D) and Writing Lives (EN53407A) and co-convene Reading the Past: Bede to Sterne (EN52414A).

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

English

Research interests

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.

Featured publications

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)

Publications and research outputs

Book

Edmund Spenser and Animal Life Stenner, Rachel and Shinn, Abigail. 2024. Edmund Spenser and Animal Life. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9783031426407
Conversion Narratives in Early Modern England: Tales of Turning Shinn, Abigail. 2018. Conversion Narratives in Early Modern England: Tales of Turning. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9783319965772

Edited Book

The Ashgate Research Companion to Popular Culture in Early Modern England 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

Edited Journal

The Copious Text: Encyclopaedic Books in Early Modern England Shinn, Abigail and Vine, Angus, eds. 2014. The Copious Text: Encyclopaedic Books in Early Modern England, Renaissance Studies, 28(2). 0269-1213
Narrating Conversion in the Early Modern World Shinn, Abigail and Mazur, Peter, eds. 2013. Narrating Conversion in the Early Modern World, Journal of Early Modern History, (17). 1385-3783

Book Section

Literature and Conversion in the English Renaissance Shinn, Abigail. 2025. Literature and Conversion in the English Renaissance. In: Deidre Shauna Lynch, ed. The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780190201098
Spenser’s ‘apish crue’: Aping in Prosopopoia or Mother Hubberds Tale 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
Animal/fable 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

Conversion Shinn, Abigail. 2023. Conversion. In: Margaret King, ed. Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
The Senses and the Seventeenth-Century English Conversion Narrative Shinn, Abigail. 2018. The Senses and the Seventeenth-Century English Conversion Narrative. In: Robin Macdonald; Emilie Murphy and Elizabeth Swann, eds. Sensing the Sacred in Medieval and Early Modern Culture,. Abingdon, OXON: Routledge, pp. 99-116. ISBN 1472454669
Gender and Reproduction in the Spirituall Experiences Shinn, Abigail. 2017. Gender and Reproduction in the Spirituall Experiences. In: Helen Smith and Simon Ditchfield, eds. Conversions: Gender and Religious Change in Early Modern Europe. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 81-104. ISBN 978-0-7190-9915-1
Father Figures: Paternal Politics in the Conversion Narratives of Thomas Gage and James Wadsworth Shinn, Abigail. 2017. Father Figures: Paternal Politics in the Conversion Narratives of Thomas Gage and James Wadsworth. In: Hannah Crawforth and Sarah Lewis, eds. Family Politics in Early Modern Literature. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 211-228. ISBN 978-1-137-51143-0
Cultures of Mending Shinn, Abigail. 2014. Cultures of Mending. In: Abigail Shinn; Andrew Hadfield and Matthew Dimmock, eds. The Ashgate Research Companion to Popular Culture in Early Modern England. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, pp. 235-252. ISBN 978-1-4094-3684-3
Spenser's Popular Intertexts Shinn, Abigail. 2013. Spenser's Popular Intertexts. In: Emma Smith and Andy Kesson, eds. The Elizabethan Top Ten: Defining Print Popularity in Early Modern England. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, pp. 157-168. ISBN 978-1-4094-4029-1
'Extraordinary discourses of vnnecessarie matter': Spenser's Shepheardes Calender and the Almanac Tradition Shinn, Abigail. 2009. 'Extraordinary discourses of vnnecessarie matter': Spenser's Shepheardes Calender and the Almanac Tradition. In: Andrew Hadfield and Matthew Dimmock, eds. Literature and Popular Culture in Early Modern England. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, pp. 137-150. ISBN 978-0-7546-6580-9

Article

Spenser's Popular Pastoral: Hodgepodges and Genre Trouble in The Shepheardes Calender Shinn, Abigail. 2023. Spenser's Popular Pastoral: Hodgepodges and Genre Trouble in The Shepheardes Calender. Sillages Critique(34), ISSN 1272-3819
“All poetry is born of play”: Spenser with Johan Huizinga Shinn, Abigail. 2023. “All poetry is born of play”: Spenser with Johan Huizinga. Spenser Studies, 37, pp. 265-281. ISSN 0195-9468
'Come to my house': The Architecture of Conversion and Marlowe's The Jew of Malta 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

Administrative Roles

Director of ECW UG Admissions
ECW Co-Senior Tutor
Programme Coordinator BA English
ECW library liaison officer