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Biography

Andrew Gordon (BA, MA, PhD) is Professor of Renaissance Literature and Culture and Co-Director of Aberdeen's interdisciplinary . His research explores the intersection between textual forms and cultural practices across the early modern period. He has published widely on the literature and culture of early modern London, on letter-writing, and on textual transmission in both manuscript and print.

He is the author of (Palgrave, 2013) as well as various collections including (U Penn, 2016) and , 1450-1690 (Routledge, 2016), (co-ed w. J. Daybell), and (Ashgate, 2013) (co-ed w. T. Rist). He also directed (1541-1601) funded by a Hunter-Caldwell award. 

His current major project, Renaissance Cultures of the Foot, is a response to literary culture's deep investment in the hand. Drawing on recent anthropological work that posits a study of culture on the ground, this project explores how the literary imagination of the period is informed by the embodied experiences of ‘footwork’.  It places the lived experience of feet in dialogue with a series of cultural roles fulfilled by, and centred on, the foot. Publications that form part of this project include 'The Renaissance Footprint: The Material Trace in Print Culture from Dürer to Spenser’, Renaissance Quarterly 71:2 (2018), 478-529 .

In recent years he has developed creative collaborations worked with the director Alasdair Hunter, and both Aberdeen Performing Arts and Lesley Anne Rose of Open Road productions.

He welcomes enquiries from prospective graduate students in all aspects of early modern research, from those interested in material texts/textual transmission, cultural mobility, memory and community. 

Research Overview

BOOKS

• , co-ed with J. Daybell (University of Pennsylvania Press, Material Texts Series, 2016)

• , co-ed with J. Daybell (Routledge, 2016).

 

• (Palgrave, Early Modern Literature In History, 2013).

 

• , co-edited with Thomas Rist (Ashgate, 2013). See the introduction.

 

• , co-edited with Bernard Klein (CUP 2001, pb 2011). See the .

 

JOURNAL SPECIAL ISSUES

• . Special Issue of The London Journal, 47:1 (2022), co-ed with Tracey Hill.
•   Special issue of Vol 4, no. 1 (2012), co-ed with James Daybell.
• A special issue of the journal Citizenship Studies (2007), co-ed with Trevor Stack.  See the co-written introduction, 'Citizenship Beyond the State: Thinking with Early Modern Citizenship in the Contemporary World'

 ARTICLES AND CHAPTERS

• 'Textual Environments', in The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Authorship, ed. Rory Loughnane and Will Sharpe, forthcoming (OUP, 2025)
• ‘Letters. Philip Sidney and the Textual Traffic of Letters’, in , ed. Catherine Bates (OUP, 2024).
• , in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature (OUP, 2024).
• ‘’, co-authored with Tracey Hill, London Journal 47:1 (2022), 1-12.
• ‘The Renaissance Footprint: The Material Trace in Print Culture from Dürer to Spenser’, Renaissance Quarterly 71:2 (2018), 478-529 .
  
• ‘Eastward Ho and the Traffic of the Stage’, in , ed Claire Jowitt and David McInnis (CUP, 2018)
  
• ‘The Paper Parish: The Parish Register and the Reformation of Parish Memory in Early Modern London’, Memory Studies Special Issue 11:1 (2018). Memory and the Early Modern eds Kate Chedgzoy, Elspeth Graham , Katharine Hodgkin and Ramona Wray, 51-68 .
• ‘Material Fictions: Counterfeit Correspondence and the Culture of Copying in Early Modern England’, in , ed. A. Gordon and J. Daybell (U Penn Press, 2016), 85-109.
• ‘The Early Modern Letter-Opener’, co-authored with James Daybell, in , ed. A Gordon and J. Daybell (U Penn Press,  2016), 1-26.
• ‘Recovering Agency in the Epistolary Traffic of Frances, Countess of Essex and Jane Daniell’, in , ed. A. Gordon and J. Daybell (Routledge, 2016), 182-206.
• ‘Living Letters’, co-authored with James Daybell in , ed. A. Gordon and J. Daybell (Routledge, 2016), 1-19.
• ‘Materiality and the Streetlife of the Early Modern City’, in ed. D. Gaimster, T. Hamling and C. Richardson (Routledge, 2016),  126-36.
• ‘The Panyer Alley Boy’, object study,  ed. D. Gaimster, T. Hamling and C. Richardson (Routledge, 2016), 215-6.
• 'The Ghost of Pasquill: The Comic Afterlife and the Afterlife of Comedy on the Elizabethan Stage', in ed. Gordon and T. Rist (Ashgate, 2013), 229-46.
• 'Essex's Last Campaign: The Fall of the Earl of Essex and Manuscript Circulation', in , ed. Lisa Hopkins and Annaliese F. Connolly (MUP, 2013), 153-68.
• 'The Puritan Widow and the Spatial Arts in Middleton's Urban Drama', in ed. Suzanne Gossett (CUP, 2011).
• 'Donne and Late Elizabethan Court Politics', in ed. J. Shami, T. Hester and D. Flynn (OUP, 2011), 460-70.
• 'Copycopia, or, the uses of copied correspondence in court culture: A case study', in ed. J. Daybell and P. Hinds (Palgrave, 2010), 65-81.
• '"A fortune of Paper walls": the letters of Francis Bacon and the earl of Essex', (2007), 319-336.
• Early Theatre 8:1 (2005), 35-51.
• 'Overseeing and Overlooking: John Stow and the Surveying of the City' in , ed Ian Gadd and Alexandra Gillespie (British Library, 2004), 81-88.
• 'The Act of Libel: Conscripting Civic Space in Early Modern England', Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 32:2 (Spring 2002), 375-397. Downloadable pdf file appears courtesy of JMEMS.
• 'Performing London: the map and the city in ceremony' in , ed. Gordon and Klein (CUP, 2001), 69-88.

ONLINE RESOURCES

• , dir. A Gordon. Research Fellow, Dr Rachel MacGregor. Early Modern Letters Online, 2017. 

REFERENCE

• 'Jane Daniell (nee de la Kethulle) [also Rehova/Ryhova], b.c.1565 d. after 1612, autobiographer', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2021) 
• 'John Daniell of Daresbury, 1544-1610', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2021) 
• 'John Stow', 'Richard Grafton', and 'Robert Devereux, 2nd earl of Essex', in Encyclopedia of English Renaissance Literature ed. Alan Stewart and Garrett Sullivan jr (Blackwells, 2012).

 

Current Research

His current major project, Renaissance Cultures of the Foot, is a response to literary culture's deep investment in the hand. Drawing on recent anthropological work that posits a study of culture on the ground, this project explores how the literary imagination of the period is informed by the embodied experiences of ‘footwork’.  It places the lived experience of feet in dialogue with a series of cultural roles fulfilled by, and centred on, the foot. Publications that form part of this project include 'The Renaissance Footprint: The Material Trace in Print Culture from Dürer to Spenser’, Renaissance Quarterly 71:2 (2018), 478-529 .

Knowledge Exchange

Recently he has developed creative collaborations with and the director Alasdair Hunter, resulting in What Country Friends Is This? a work combining research on early modern touring players with experiences of members of the city's Polish community, that featured in the festival. Reimagined with the writer Lesley-Anne Rose of Open Road Productions, and funded by Creative Scotland, it was performed at . A new collaboration with Alasdair Hunter, used lockdown recorded performances of letters from the plays of Shakespeare and early modern culture, as part of a reflection on absence, isolation, and the place of theatre under the title A Merry Note. .

Teaching Responsibilities

EL2011: Encounters with Shakespeare

EL30CP: Page and Stage: Renaissance Writing, 1500-1640

EL40AD: Staging the City: Renaissance Urban Drama

EL5590: Locations and Dislocations: The Role of Place in Literature