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Dr Stewart Mottram

Dr Stewart Mottram

Director of Research, School of Humanities, and Reader in English

Faculty and Department

  • Faculty of Arts Cultures and Education
  • School of Humanities

Summary

Dr Stewart Mottram is Reader in English, specialising in interdisciplinary approaches to seventeenth-century English literature in its religious, social and environmental contexts.

In his current work, Stewart collaborates with environmental specialists from across the humanities and sciences to foreground the history of flooding and its role in shaping the literatures and cultures of regions that continue to live with flood risk today.

Stewart has held fellowships from the Leverhulme Trust (2008-10) and AHRC (2014-15), and recently led the AHRC/XR Stories ‘By the rising tide of Humber’ project (2019-20), which worked across disciplines and with digital industries to virtually recreate a 1640s flood of Hull.

Stewart also works closely with other green-blue humanities projects at the University of Hull investigating the cultures and histories of water and flooding. He is Co-I on the AHRC Risky Cities project at Hull (2020-23) and Deputy Director of the University of Hull Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarships Centre for Water Cultures

Stewart is author of over 25 publications, including two research monographs and a co-edited collection, and he is particularly recognised for his work on Hull poet, Andrew Marvell (1621-78).

His most recent book, ‘Ruin and Reformation in Spenser, Shakespeare, and Marvell’, was published by Oxford University Press in 2019. His research on Andrew Marvell and medical cures for malaria in seventeenth-century England was first reported in The Observer newspaper in August 2020, and is available to read open access in the journal The Seventeenth Century (2021).

Stewart is also a published poet, and his latest poem, ‘In Search of Appleton’, is out now with Broken Sleep Books as part of a new collection of poems - ‘Companions of his Thoughts More Green’ (2022) - to mark the 400th anniversary of Andrew Marvell’s birth.

Stewart is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA), a Fellow of the RSA (FRSA), and a member of the AHRC’s Peer Review College.

Level 4

- Poetry, Past and Present (module leader)

Level 5

- Writing the Environment (module leader)

- Love, Desire, and Death

Level 6

- Dissertation (supervisor)

Level 7

- Fictions of Flooding, from Noah to Now (module leader)

- Dissertation (supervisor)

Recent outputs

View more outputs

Book

Ruin and reformation in Spenser, Shakespeare, and Marvell

Mottram, S. (2019). Ruin and reformation in Spenser, Shakespeare, and Marvell. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Book Chapter

Rereading Ruins: Edmund Spenser and Scottish Presbyterianism

Mottram, S. (2020). Rereading Ruins: Edmund Spenser and Scottish Presbyterianism. In A. Walsham, B. Wallace, C. Law, & B. Cummings (Eds.), Memory and the English Reformation (223-237). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Journal Article

Deluge and disease: plague, the poetry of flooding, and the history of health inequalities in Andrew Marvell's Hull

Mottram, S. (2023). Deluge and disease: plague, the poetry of flooding, and the history of health inequalities in Andrew Marvell’s Hull. Seventeenth Century, https://doi.org/10.1080/0268117X.2022.2142656

"A most excellent medicine": Malaria, Mithridate, and the death of Andrew Marvell

Mottram, S. (in press). “A most excellent medicine”: Malaria, Mithridate, and the death of Andrew Marvell. Seventeenth Century, 1-27. https://doi.org/10.1080/0268117x.2021.1901240

Book review: The concept of nature in Early Modern English Literature

Mottram, S. (in press). Book review: The concept of nature in Early Modern English Literature. Seventeenth Century, 1-2. https://doi.org/10.1080/0268117x.2019.1615540

Research interests

Literature and environment, eco-criticism, environmental humanities, seventeenth-century studies, digital heritage, arts and heritage community engagement.

Lead investigator

Project

Funder

Grant

Started

Status

Project

By the rising tide of Humber: Flooding Andrew Marvell's Hull

Funder

AHRC Arts & Humanities Research Council

Grant

£7,658.00

Started

1 October 2019

Status

Complete

Co-investigator

Project

Funder

Grant

Started

Status

Project

Risky Cities: Living with water in an uncertain future climate

Funder

AHRC Arts & Humanities Research Council

Grant

£333,903.00

Started

1 August 2020

Status

Ongoing

Project

The University of Hull Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarships Centre on Water Cultures

Funder

The Leverhulme Trust

Grant

£1,350,000.00

Started

1 June 2021

Status

Ongoing

Project

On the Edge: a co-created exploration of young people’s eco-anxiety in the face of climate uncertainty

Funder

NERC Natural Environment Research Council

Grant

£10,000.00

Started

1 July 2021

Status

Complete

Postgraduate supervision

Stewart is an interdisciplinary researcher with particular strengths in seventeenth-century English literature, from Shakespeare to Marvell. He reads English literature in its religious, social and environmental contexts and welcomes enquiries from potential research students (Masters and PhD) who wish to work on the following broad themes, in any period from 1400 onwards:

- Literature and religion (Reformation iconoclasm and religious violence, Anglicanism, the English nonconformist tradition)

- Literature and environment (water and flood, estuary cultures, the green-blue humanities)

- Literature and disease (histories of malaria, plague, typhus)

Completed PhDs

I have supervised the following projects to successful completion in recent years:

- Rebecca Devine, Epistolary Larkin: Letters, Life, and the Literary Biography (2022). External examiner, Professor Richard Bradford (Ulster)

- Louise Powell, The Crisis of Masculinity: Twins, Early Modern Medicine, and Drama, 1594-1655 (2018).

- Kaylara Ann Reed, Writing Reform in 14th-century English Romance (2017). External examiner, Professor Raluca Radulescu (Bangor).

- Amy Albudri, Phantasmal Morgans and Other Women (2016). External examiner, Dr Rob Gossedge (Cardiff).

Current PhD supervisions

I currently act as first supervisor for the following four PhD projects:

Mary Rehman, ‘Shut up’: Pandemic Lockdowns and Health Inequalities, 1600 to present day

Felicity Wood, English Literature, Water, Health, and Wellbeing in Estuary Communities, 1500-1700

Anna Stevenson, Ted Hughes’ Mythic Poets: Reflections on the Inner Self and Divine Power

Jonathan Morton, Conventions are forever: the influence of Medieval romance narrative on female agency in the Bond film franchise

Membership/Fellowship of professional body

Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA)

2015

Research assessment service

Member of the AHRC Peer Review College

2020

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