Biography
Douglas Clark is a specialist in early modern English literature and intellectual culture. He joined St Hilda's in 2025 as a Lecturer in English, having previously worked in British, Irish, and Swiss universities. He also currently teaches English at Wadham College.
Douglas's research broadly focuses on Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, the depiction of the mind in early modern literary culture, and the history of poetics. He has recently published in the journals of English Literary History, Renaissance Drama, The Seventeenth Century, Studies in Philology, and Women’s Writing on: Elizabethan and Jacobean testamentary drama; how mental distress was portrayed through maritime metaphors in English Renaissance poetry; John Donne’s contribution to the genre of the lyric; and how civility was codified in early modern conduct literature and drama. His first book, The Will in English Renaissance Drama (Cambridge University Press, 2025) argues that the performance of the will – as both a faculty of the soul and as a legal document – indelibly shaped the nature of early Elizabethan and late Jacobean dramatic culture. English Renaissance playwrights were preoccupied with reflecting on the influence that wills exerted over one’s life and afterlife.
In the 2025-26 academic year, Douglas will teach the FHS 'Literature in English, 1550-1660' paper and 'Shakespeare' paper.
Positions
- Lecturer in English
Subjects
- English
