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Staff Profile

Dr Kate De Rycker

Lecturer in Renaissance Literature

  • Address: School of English Literature, Language & Linguistics
    Percy Building
    Newcastle University
    Newcastle upon Tyne
    NE1 7RU
Background

Role in the School

I am a Lecturer in Renaissance Literature, and co-ordinate a core first-year module on pre-1800 literature. I am also the Co-ordinator for the English and Classics degree, and the Co-ordinator for English Literature in Combined Honours for the academic year 2023-24.

 

Expertise

I am interested in literary culture in the early modern period, especially the way in which an 'urban Gothic' mode of writing was used to explore the dangers of the city, and the precarious economic and social status of freelance writer. My work ranges across literary cultures (Italian and English), historical periods (1520s-1660s), and across material forms (performance, printed prose and plays, manuscript circulation). I sit on the steering committee of the HaSS faculty’s MATCH research group which generates and co-ordinates research into material culture. As part of that role, I am keen to facilitate interdisciplinary research into the material history of writing and performance.


I am interested in encouraging student participation in arts research. For an example of the kind of collaborative and public facing research that I have produced with undergraduate students, have a look at this digital exhibition on the Elizabethan satirist Thomas Nashe and his connection to modern day precarious employment: https://speccollstories.ncl.ac.uk/digital-thomas-nashe/index.html

 

Biography

  • BA (Hons) English Literature and Language (Jesus College, Oxford)
  • MA in ‘Shakespeare Studies’ (King's College London and the Globe Theatre)
  • Erasmus Mundus Joint-PhD in ‘Text and Event in Early Modern Europe’ (University of Kent and Universidade do Porto)
  • Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA)

 

Research

 My research focuses on the 'Renaissance urban gothic' as a mode in which freelance writers described their precarious social position, the danger of the expanding cities in which they worked, and the lengths to which people would go to make money. I am especially interested in the way that magic, alchemy and deals with the devil, are used as metaphors for social progress.


I am interested in encouraging student participation in arts research. For an example of the kind of collaborative and public facing research that I have produced with undergraduate students, have a look at this digital exhibition on the Elizabethan satirist Thomas Nashe and his connection to modern day precarious employment: https://speccollstories.ncl.ac.uk/digital-thomas-nashe/index.html


Current Research Projects:

As part of an AHRC funded project initiated by Jennifer Richards (Newcastle) and Andrew Hadfield (Sussex), I am currently editing Thomas Nashe’s essay on dream interpretation, The Terrors of the Night, which I adapted for performance as part of the ‘Read not Dead’ series at Shakespeare’s Globe in 2017. This project will result in a six volume New Critical Edition of Thomas Nashe (Oxford University Press, c.2025) for which I will also be co-writing an introductory essay on print culture and Nashe's readers. Together with Hadfield and Richards, I am co-editing The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Nashe (OUP, c.2025) which will bring together essays which uncover this little-known writer's considerable impact on Elizabethan literature.


With Cathy Shrank (Sheffield) I am the co-I of the AHRC funded 'Penniless?'Project (2022-3) which uses Nashe’s Pierce Penilesse (a story of an unemployed arts graduate selling his work to the devil) to explore issues of precarious employment for today’s 16-24 year olds, especially in the arts and heritage industries. This project builds on our experience working with creative practitioners for the Nashe Project, by collaborating with a local theatre company, a fine artist, and podcast producer to draw out contemporary themes from this Elizabethan text. 


I have also edited a special edition of Renaissance Studies 67.2 (2023) with William T. Rossiter (East Anglia) on 'Aretino's Cityscapes' which seeks to underline Pietro Aretino' extensive cultural importance in the early modern period, and highlights his contributions to the development of a new metropolitan cultural identity. 


Research supervision 

I am currently supervising a Northern-Bridge funded PhD on precarity in the Elizabethan print industry (Matthew Ryan, 2022-25), and have previously supervised another Northern-Bridge PhD on the materiality of language in early modern literature (Emily Rowe, 2018-21).


I would be happy to hear from prospective MLitt, MPhil or PhD students interested in developing a research project on any of the following:

  • print authorship and literary reputations
  • the 'gothic' in the early modern period
  • metadramatic scenes or plays
  • European 'go-betweens' in the English theatre or print industry
  • theatre history (e.g. theatre companies and their repertories; careers of individual actors; an object-oriented study of e.g. props, cosmetics, costumes)
  • drama in print (e.g. the printing, censorship, or circulation of play-texts)
  • popular print culture (e.g. the circulation of ephemera like pamphlets or erotica)  
  • research into modern creative responses to early modern texts
Teaching

I am passionate about diversifying our teaching of earlier literature at Newcastle, whether by enabling students to become active readers who can read canonical texts 'against the grain', by using hands-on, creative approaches to teaching plays and printed texts in seminars to bring the words off the page, or by diversifying our range of assessments to allow for inclusive teaching, which assesses not only the key skill of essay writing, but also providing alternative assessments which develop other transferable skills, such as presentations or problem solving.


I am interested in encouraging student participation in arts research. For an example of the kind of collaborative and public facing research that I have produced with undergraduate students, have a look at this digital exhibition on the Elizabethan satirist Thomas Nashe and his connection to modern day precarious employment: https://speccollstories.ncl.ac.uk/digital-thomas-nashe/index.html


.I am currently in the process of redesigning a key core module at stage 1 which will be available for students in the academic year 2024/25.


For 2023-4 I will be supervising dissertations in English and Classics and English, as well as teaching on: 


Semester one:

SEL2232: Stagecraft in Early Drama


Semester two:

SEL1004: Introduction to Literary Studies 2 (module convener)

SEL2201: Renaissance Bodies 

Publications