Sajed Chowdhury

MA (St Andrews), MA, DPhil (Sussex)

My primary field of research is early modern literature, specializing in Renaissance poetry, early modern women’s writing, manuscript identities, and the history of sexuality. My doctoral thesis, ‘Dissident Metaphysics in Renaissance Women’s Poetry’ (2013), was completed at the University of Sussex and was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK). My thesis explores the presence of metaphysical philosophy in the writings of Marie Maitland (d. 1596), Aemilia Lanyer (1569-1645), Constance Aston Fowler (1621?-1664) and Katherine Philips (1632-1664).

As MHRA Research Associate, I am carrying out provenance research on the manuscripts of 200 authors for the open-access online resource, the Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts 1450-1700 (CELM, http://www.celm-ms.org.uk/). This provenance research is being developed into an article, ‘‘Very neat, scarce’: The Presence of Early Modern Women’s Writing in Booksellers’ and Auctioneers’ Catalogues’, which analyses the significant literary afterlives of Renaissance women.

I have recently published an article in the journal, Textual Cultures, on the sixteenth-century Scots manuscript verse miscellany, the Maitland Quarto (c. 1586), which is affiliated with the compiler and poet, Marie Maitland. This article considers how relative anonymity could be used as an aesthetic strategy for Renaissance women authors in a male (or) coterie context.

My current research project, Renaissance Hermeticism and Women, is a book-length study which explores the concept of the ‘Hermetic’ in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century women’s writing. The study examines how early modern women writers responded to the ancient gnostic texts, the Hermetica, which were translated and printed in French, Italian and English during the Renaissance. The monograph aims to re-configure what is meant by the Hermetic metaphysical tradition by examining the writings of Marguerite of Navarre, Margaret Clifford, Aemilia Lanyer, St Teresa of Ávila, Katherine Philips, Rebecca Vaughan and Hester Pulter. This book engages with Renaissance literary criticism, feminist epistemology, cultural theory of the body, and the history of philosophy and medicine.

Publications

‘‘Thair is mair constancie in o[u]r sex / Then euer ama[n]g men hes bein’: The Metaphysics of Authorship in the Maitland Quarto Manuscript (ca. 1586)’, in Textual Cultures: Texts, Contexts, Interpretation, Special Issue: Northern Book Cultures, ed. by Joanna Martin and Katherine McClune (Indiana University Press, 2012), 7. 1, 50-76.

Conference Presentations

 ‘‘Hir awin langage’: The Presence of Marie Maitland and Grizel Hay in the Maitland Quarto Manuscript (c. 1586)’, paper delivered at Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, San Diego, 4-6 April 2013.

 ‘‘Makes her soule and body one’: The Metaphysics of ‘Making’ in the Verse Miscellany of Constance Aston Fowler (c. 1635-1638)’, paper delivered at the ‘Manuscript Identities and the Transmission of Texts in the English Renaissance’ conference, University of Sheffield, 25-26 May 2012.

 ‘‘O! my Lucasia, let us speak our Love’: Female Homosociality in Katherine Philips’s ‘Lucasia’ Poems’, paper delivered at the ‘Early Modern Women and Poetry’ conference, Birkbeck, University of London, 17-18 July 2009

Academic Awards

2009–2012, Arts and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Award.

2006–2007, Arts and Humanities Research Council Postgraduate Award: Research Preparation Master’s Scheme.

2000, Lawson Memorial Prize (awarded for excellence in Literature at the University of St Andrews).

2000, Cromwell Association Essay Prize.

1999, Medal in First Year English (awarded at the University of St Andrews).