PhD Studentship: Remembering William Shakespeare, English - PhD (Leverhulme Trust Funded)

A PhD studentship is available as part of the Leverhulme Trust-funded research project ‘Shakespearean Graves: Literature and the Anglophone Way of Death’. This PhD will focus on how Shakespeare has been commemorated from the early modern period to the present, including through physical monuments and memorials. The successful candidate will work as part of a project team investigating the role of Shakespeare’s language in Anglophone cultures of death and remembrance. The project’s interdisciplinary approach, and its expanding database of Shakespearean memorials, will assist the PhD student in developing innovative methods and perspectives for the study of Shakespeare’s own commemoration.

From the point of his death in 1616, Shakespeare has been commemorated both in physical memorials and in poems arguing that his works are the best monument to his life. From the eighteenth century to the present, memorials to Shakespeare have proliferated on a global scale, in forms ranging from grand monuments to portable mementos, stamps and currency, and commemorative events. Attention to how, when, and where Shakespeare has been commemorated will shed light on his varying cultural and ideological significance across both space and time.

The successful applicant will have a role in selecting the focus of their research, though it should be both cross-period and global in its scope. Themes explored in the PhD may include: Shakespeare's role in Imperial and Commonwealth history; the relationship between physical and literary monumentality; monuments and canon formation; the rise of Shakespeare tourism; the impact of fandom and celebrity culture on Shakespeare commemoration; the material culture of mementos and souvenirs; commemoration as creative appropriation; and how monuments situate Shakespeare in relation to his works, including through quotation. It is not expected that a single PhD thesis would cover all of these topics in equal depth.

Questions to be explored will include: What cultural and political factors lie behind the decision to commemorate Shakespeare in a given time and place? How do memorials to Shakespeare adopt or adapt his own commemorative strategies?  How does Shakespeare’s commemoration intersect or coincide with the commemoration of other individuals or events?

The successful candidate will be lead-supervised by the PI, Prof. Philip Schwyzer, with the appointment of co-supervisors (possibly from allied fields such as History, Heritage Studies, Drama, or Digital Humanities) dependent on the project’s focus and methods.

Involvement in the project provides advantages that are not available for a standalone PhD.

These include:

1. working as part of team in developing approaches to the textual and material culture of commemoration;
2. a grounding in digital humanities research methods through discussions with other project members;
3. support for travel to relevant archives and sites of Shakespearean commemoration in the UK; and
4. an opportunity to publish research in project publications.

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