Professor Gillian Woods

Background

I joined Magdalen in 2024, having worked previously at Birkbeck, University of London, where I was a Reader in Renaissance Literature and Theatre.  Before that, I was a Lecturer in Early Modern Literature at the University of Sheffield, and a Tutor and Junior Research Fellow at Wadham College, Oxford.  I studied my BA, MSt and DPhil degrees at Oxford, at Lady Margaret Hall and Hertford College.

Teaching

I teach undergraduate papers in early modern literature from 1550-1760 and graduate courses on the MSt, with a particular focus on drama.  I have supervised doctoral students in a range of topics relating to Renaissance theatre and culture.

Research Interests

I work on early modern drama and theatricality.  My first book, Shakespeare’s Unreformed Fictions (OUP, 2013; awarded Shakespeare’s Globe Book Award, 2014), investigated the Reformation’s impact on theatre, shifting debate away from speculation about playwrights’ faith to the dramatic meaning of residually religious material. My current Leverhulme-funded monograph, Renaissance Theatricalities, uncovers playhouse practices that have become illegible over time and shows how stagecraft shapes character, genre and political meaning.  This work follows up on some of the questions raised by my co-edited collection, Stage Directions and Shakespearean Theatre(Arden, 2018; with Sarah Dustagheer).  I have also published essays and articles on varied early modern drama, on topics ranging from invisibility to ecology.

Editing forms another major part of my research.  I am one of three General Editors of the forthcoming Cambridge Shakespeare Editions (with M.J. Kidnie and Sonia Massai) and am editing A Midsummer Night’s Dream for this series. 

Together with Liam Semler, I am a Series Editor of Cambridge Elements in Shakespeare and Pedagogy.  This series synthesises theory and practice, publishing provocative research and creative, practical interventions into learning and teaching in Shakespeare Studies.

Books

Stage Directions and Shakespearean Theatre, ed. Sarah Dustagheer and Gillian Woods (London: Arden, 2018; paperback edition, 2019).

Romeo and Juliet: Readers’ Guide to Essential Criticism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

Shakespeare’s Unreformed Fictions (Oxford University Press, 2013).

Essays and Articles

‘A Lion, an Ass, a Dog, and a Wall: A Midsummer Night’s Dream’s Ecological Theatricality’, Shakespeare Survey 78 (forthcoming, 2025).

‘Ways of Seeing in Renaissance Theatre: Speculating on Invisibility’, Renaissance Drama 47 (2019): 125-51.

‘Understanding Dumb Shows and Interpreting The White Devil’, in Stage Directions and Shakespearean Theatre, ed. Sarah Dustagheer and Gillian Woods (Arden, 2018), pp. 287-310.

With Laura Seymour, ‘Learning and Teaching Resources’, in Henry V: A Critical Reader, ed. Karen Britland and Line Cottegnies (Arden, 2018), pp. 221-46.

‘Indulgent Representation: Theatricality and Sectarian Metaphor in The Tempest’, Literature Compass (2014): 703-14.

‘Marlowe and Religion’, in Marlowe in Context, eds. Emily Bartels and Emma Smith (Cambridge University Press, 2013): 222-31.

‘“Strange Discourse”: The Controversial Subject of Sir Thomas More’, Renaissance Drama 39 (2011): 3-35.

‘The Confessional Identities of ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore’, in ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, ed. Lisa Hopkins (Continuum, 2009): 114-135.

‘Catholicism and Conversion in Love’s Labour’s Lost’, in How to do Things with Shakespeare, ed. Laurie Maguire (Blackwell, 2008): 101-130.

‘The Contexts of The Trial of Chivalry’, Notes and Queries 252.3 (2007): 313-318.