Helen Smith

Professor of Renaissance Literature
University of York

Head of Department, English and Related Literature

helen.smith@york.ac.uk

Biography

Having completed my MA (Hons) at the University of Glasgow, and my PhD at the University of York, I taught at St Andrews and Hertfordshire before returning to York as a lecturer in 2004. My research focusses on what literary critics and historians call the early modern period, reaching roughly from 1500-1700. I’m interested in questions of materiality and the stuff of the cosmos, and early modern ways of thinking about relationships between humans and the natural world.

Research

My current monograph project considers the liveliness of early modern matter, and its material expressions, and I am supervising PhD theses on early modern biocitizens, and late medieval and early modern attitudes to disability.

Publication Highlights

Related publications include:

Smith, H. (2023). Eggs, Cheese, and (Francis) Bacon. In Vanhaelen, A. and Wilson, B. (eds) Making Worlds: Global Invention in the Early Modern Period. University of Toronto Press, UCLA Clark Memorial Library Series.

Smith, H. (2017). Cooking the Books: The Kitchen in the Printing House. In J Scott-Warren & A Zurcher (eds), Text, Food and the Early Modern Reader: Eating Words. Routledge, London. 

Smith, H. (2016). The Book. In Lee J (ed) A Handbook of English Renaissance Studies. Wiley-Blackwell, London. 

Smith H. (2017). Animal Families. In: Crawforth H., Lewis S. (eds) Family Politics in Early Modern Literature. Early Modern Literature in History. Palgrave Macmillan, London.

Find out more about Helen's work