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Alanna Skuse

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Lecturer in English Literature, University of Reading

Alanna Skuse is a scholar of early modern literature and history. Her work looks at the 'altered bodies' of amputees and other surgery survivors in early modern England. It considers the social, cultural, and spiritual ramifications of altered bodies, touching on prosthesis, phantom limbs, disability in literature, and bodily resurrection.

Alanna has lectured at the Universities of Bristol and Exeter and is currently Wellcome Trust University Award holder at the University of Reading. She has previously published on early modern treatments for cancer and on the uses of 'canker' in Shakespeare's Sonnets.

Experience

  • –present
    Lecturer in English Literature, University of Reading

Education

  • 2013 
    University of Exeter, PhD English and History

Publications

  • 2021
    Surgery and Selfhood in Early Modern England: Altered Bodies and Contexts of Identity, Cambridge University Press
  • 2019
    ‘”With one stroak of his razour”: tales of self-castration in early modern England.’, Social History of Medicine
  • 2017
    ‘”Keep your face out of my way or I’ll bite off your nose”: Homoplastics, Sympathy, and the Noble Body in the Tatler, 1710’ , Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies
  • 2017
    ‘Missing Parts in The Shoemaker’s Holiday’ , Renaissance Drama
  • 2015
    ‘Ravenous Natures’: Constructions of Cancer in Early Modern England, c.1580 – 1720. , Palgrave
  • 2014
    ‘Wombs, Worms and Wolves: Constructing Cancer in Early Modern England’ , Social History of Medicine

Grants and Contracts

  • 2019
    “What think you of a wound?”: self-wounding in early modern England.
    Role:
    Principal Investigator
    Funding Source:
    Wellcome Trust
  • 2016
    Surgically altered bodies in early modern England, 1600-1745
    Role:
    Principal Investigator
    Funding Source:
    Wellcome Trust
  • 2015
    Early modern surgery and the manuscript diaries of Rev. John Ward
    Role:
    Long-term fellow
    Funding Source:
    Folger Shakespeare Library
  • 2010
    Constructions of Cancer in Early Modern England, 1580-1720
    Role:
    Principal Investigator
    Funding Source:
    Wellcome Trust