Jyotsna Singh

Biography

Jyotsna G. Singh teaches and researches early modern literature and culture, including Shakespeare, travel writing, postcolonial theory, early modern histories of Islam, and gender and race studies, often exploring the intersections of these different fields and periods.

Her published work includes: The Weyward Sisters: Shakespeare and Feminist Politics (Blackwell), (co-authored); Colonial Narratives/Cultural Dialogues: ‘Discovery’ of India in the Language of Colonialism (Routledge); and Travel Knowledge: European ‘Discoveries’ in the Early Modern Period (Palgrave), (co-ed. Ivo Kamps), and A Companion to the Global Renaissance: English Literature and Culture in the Era of Expansion, 1559–1660. Ed. (Blackwell); The Postcolonial World (co-ed, David D. Kim), Routledge; and most recently, Shakespeare and Postcolonial Theory (Arden 2019).

Her latest book, A Companion to the Global Renaissance: Literature and Culture in the Era of Expansion, 1500-1700 Second Edition. (Wiley Blackwell, 2021). This issue includes a collection of original essays that provide an expansive picture of globalization across the early modern world.

Most Recently, Singh has signed a contract (2021)with Cambridge University Press, UK, to produce/write a new edition of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. (co-editor Professor Matthew Dimmock, due 2004.

Currently, she is working on two projects: i) A monograph that draws on postcolonial theory, global exchange, and early modern history of Islam and Christianity. Tentatively entitled, Muslim and Christian Identity-formations in the Early Modern World, this monograph looks afresh at the shifting applications of the term ‘religion’ in Europe, via a conglomeration of Muslim cultural memories and European imaginings of the Muslim ‘other.’

ii) A series of essays on a reassessment of early English Slave voyages, expanding on a forthcoming chapter, “Hakluyt’s books and Hakwins Slaving Voyages: The Transatlantic Slave Trade in the English Imaginary, 1562-1600.”

Jyotsna Singh has received several research fellowships: at the Folger Shakespeare Library; a Distinguished Visiting Faculty Fellowship at Queen Mary, University of London (2008); and a Long-Term Fellowship at the John Carter Brown Library, Brown University, (2010).

Most recently, she received a visiting Fellowship at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford University, UK (Michaelmas (Fall term 2019). She was also invited to design and lead three Research Workshops at the Newberry Library (Renaissance Center): Anglo-Muslim Encounters (2011), and Reading the Early Modern Anglo-Muslim Archive (2012); and Early Anglo-Muslim Encounters, (March 2020).

She was also an Invited speaker at Georgetown University, NEH Summer Teaching Institute for Teachers: “Connected History of the Renaissance,’ Aug, 3-6, 2020. https://www.newberry.org/03062020-early-modern-anglo-muslim-encounters.

She has been invited as a plenary or Keynote speaker at conferences and invited talks world-wide, ranging from Greece, Portugal, Delhi, U.K., Germany, and Paris.

Please see links below to two recent Invited Lectures/Interviews:

London Shakespeare Seminar January 24, 2022: https://www.sas.ac.uk/videos-and-podcasts/culture-language-and-literature/london-shakespeare-seminar-1

The Global Renaissance and Islamic Worlds, March 6, 2022

Sponsored: Society for Renaissance Studies, UK, and Medieval and Early Modern Orients https://www.crowdcast.io/e/memos-on-griw?fbclid=IwAR174ZuMO7tEnaPtRyeWEW5lUkib_FFDpOLlXn-eRf7iNTOPnt1odm3VruU

Among her long-term research projects is a book/data base on “Iraqi Kurdistan,” on which she has published two blog essays, based on her travels and research to the region through an MSU exchange program (via an IREX grant- http://www.irex.org/).

Blogs http://www.chapatimystery.com/archives/potpurri/a_musafir_in_iraqi_kurdistan.html Part I http://www.chapatimystery.com/archives/potpurri/a_musafir_in_iraqi_kurdistan_part_ii.html