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Iman Sheeha

I am a Leverhulme Research Fellow working with Dr. John Gilmore on the project 'Oriental Poetry, Latin Scholarship and the European Enlightenment'. I hold a PhD from the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies, The University of Warwick. I have completed a BA in English Literature (2004) and a Postgraduate Diploma in English Literary Studies (2005) at The University of Damascus, Syria, and an MA in English Literature at The University of Warwick (2009). I taught English Language and Literature modules at The University of Damascus for two years before having been awarded a Scholarship by the same university to do my MA and PhD in the UK. I am currently working on a book on the representations of the servant characters in early modern English domestic tragedy. I am co-editing a volume on the politics of early modern domestic drama to be published by Manchester University Press and writing a book on roles of household servants in early modern English domestic tragedy to be published by Routledge (Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture Series).


My Thesis

Supervisr: Professor Carol Chillington Rutter

Entitled, "Staging the Servant: An Examination of The Roles of Household Servants in Early Modern Domestic Tragedy," my thesis examines the roles of household servants in five early modern English domestic tragedies. Concerned with non-elite households and invariably set in the domestic interior of English houses, the genre had a short life span—between the 1590s and the 1620s. In conducting this research, I participate in the critical efforts exerted for writing history from below, for recovering the stories of the marginalized, the voiceless and the vanished, particularly of the domestic servant. In early modern England, the practice of household service was a distinctive cultural feature that, nonetheless, has only recently started attracting critical attention. Analyzing the parts of household servants in the anonymous Arden of Faversham (1592), A Warning for Fair Women (1599), A Yorkshire Tragedy (1608), Thomas Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness (1607) and William Rowley, Thomas Dekker and John Ford’s The Witch of Edmonton (1621), I investigate how playwrights, in staging those servants’ subjectivities, their points of view, interrogate cultural stereotypes reproduced in contemporary conduct books and household manuals, thus participating in re-shaping early modern culture and popular views as much as having their plays shaped by them. I conduct this research by exploring early modern theorizing on the domestic and by examining contemporary ideologies of the institution of domestic service, then reading the scenarios involving servants staged in domestic tragedies in their light.

Public Outreach
‘Domestic Tragedy and Change in Early Modern Theatrical Tradition’. A Public Lecture to be delivered as part of Durham University’s Late Summer Lecture Series, 30 August, 2017.

Invited Lecture
‘I have served her man and boy this seven years:’ The Servant Experience in Early Modern Domestic Tragedy. The Department of English, Queen Mary University of London, March, 2018.

Conferences

‘Behold my children, I will not bequeath/ Or gold or silver to you, […]/ But here I give to each of you a book/ Of holy meditations, Bradford’s works:’ Devotional Writing as a Player in the Theatre of Punishment in A Warning for Fair Women (1599), University of Warwick, 26 June, 2017.

''Look in the place where he was wont to sit/ His Blood! It is too manifest:' The House as Extension of Identity in The Tragedy of Master Arden of Faversham (1592). At Close Quarters: Experiencing the Domestic, c. 1400-1600, The University of York, 3 March, 2017.

'Theatre as Revealer of Truth in Hamlet': 'What legacy shall I bequeath thee?': Shakeapeasre in the Context of his Time, The University of Aberdeen, October 2016.

'Look in the place where he was wont to sit/ His blood! It is too manisfest!': The House as Extension of Identity in The Treagedy of Master Arden of Faversham (1592)': Identifying Identity: ideas of personal and public identity in in the medieval and early modern world, Durham University, July 2016.

“I think ’tis I am tainted”: Loss and Restoration of Male Honour in Thomas Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness (1603): The University of Warwick Faculty of Arts Seminar Series, February 2015.

“'I'll henceforth turn a spy,/ And watch them in their close conveyances:” Spying as Good Service in Thomas Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness (1603)": 1st Global Conference­--Deception, Mansfield College, University of Oxford, UK, July 2014.

"'Were you the Devil, I would hold you sir": Domestic Tyranny and Servants' Resistance in A Yorkshire Tragedy (1608)": Shakespeare Britgrad Conference, The Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon, June 2014.

“'I will kill my master/ Or any thing that you will haue me doo”: Corrupt Domestic Service in The Tragedy of Master Arden of Faversham (1592)": 10th Anniversary Postgraduate Symposium, Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies, The University of Warwick, May 2014.

"'Were you the Devil, I would hold you sir": Domestic Tyranny and Servants' Resistance in A Yorkshire Tragedy (1608)": The University of Warwick Faculty of Arts Seminar Series, November 2013.

Participant at the Roundtable discussion ‘Historicism versus Presentism: Dealing with the Past and the Present in Early Modern Studies:’ The 8th Annual Postgraduate Symposium, Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick, June 2012.

Publications

Monograph

Staging the Servant: Recuperated Voices on the Early Modern English Stage. Under contract with Routledge (Routledge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture Series), 2019.

Editing

Collection of essays entitled: English Domestic Drama and Renaissance Political Thought. Co-edited with Eoin Price (University of Swansea). Under contract with Manchester University Press, 2018.

Co-edited e-book (with Emma Williams): Deception: Probing the Boundaries. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2014.

Refereed journal articles

‘I haue paid the Duty to the Sonne, which I haue vowed to the Father’: Serving the Father in John Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s A Whore (1633). Early Modern Literary Studies. Special Issue: John Ford 26 (2017).

‘Look in the place where he was wont to sit/ His Blood! It is too manifest:’ The House as Extension of Identity in The Tragedy of Master Arden of Faversham (1592). Under review by English Literary Renaissance.

'I'll henceforth turn a spy,/ And watch them in their close conveyances:' Spying as Good Service in Thomas Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness (1603): in Deception: Probing the Boundaries. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2014.

'I'll henceforth turn a spy,/ And watch them in their close conveyances:' Spying as Good Service in Thomas Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness (1603) in The Apollonian: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies Vol. 1, Issue. 1 (September 2014).

Reviews

Records of Early English Drama: Civic London to 1558. Edited by Anne Lancashire. 3 Volumes (Cambridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2015). London Journal The London Journal (2016), 41(1), pp. 100–101.

I also regularly review manuscripts for Exchanges: The Warwick Research Journal, The Journal of Arabian Studies, Sanglap: Journal of Literary and Cultural Inquiry, English: The Journal of the English Association and Review of English Studies (Oxford UP). I have reviewed monograph proposals for Manchester University Press.

Teaching experience

In 2016/17 I am teaching two seminar groups and lecturing on the module Medieval to Renaissance Lirerature,

In 2015/16, I convened the module, Comparative Perspectives on Arabic Literature and taught the module Early Modern Drama. I also taught on the module Medieval to Renaissance Literature and led a seminar on Academic Writing run by The Writing Centre.

In 2014/15, I taught seminars and lecturing on the first year module, Medieval to Renaissance Literature.

In the second term of 2014/2015, I led two MA seminars on the topic of Early Modern Domestic Tragedy in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies and in the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance at the University of Warwick.

In the Summer Term of 2013/2014, I lectured on the undergraduate module, Medieval to Renaissance Literature.

Before coming to the UK to pursue postgraduate study, I taught for two years in the Department of English Language and Literature, The University of Damascus (2006-2008) where I was a Teaching Assistant.

Other Activities

2014/15 I co-organised the Interdisciplinary Seminar Series--Sidelights on Shakespeare, hosted by the English Department, The University of Warwick

2014/15 I co-organisered the Arts Faculty Seminar Series.2013 I was a Research Assistant on the project "Warwick DAR," an online databank of original and rare resources on Arabic literature, history, politics and culture. Link to Warwick DAR

2012 I co-organised the "Othering Literary Studies" reading group.

2011 I co-organised a reading group on literary theory.

Iman Sheeha

Iman Sheeha

I dot Sheeha at warwick dot ac dot uk