Biography
I received my PhD and MA degrees from McMaster University, and my BA from the University of Ottawa. Before coming to RMC, I held a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship at Queen's University, where I researched shifting meanings of "pride" (from chief cardinal sin to self-confidence and assertion) as this concept intersects with understandings of gender in the English Renaissance. This research emerged from my first book project on dramatic representations of women and the soul-body dynamic in the seventeenth century. Both projects share a sense that the particular inflections of gender they examine resonate, perhaps insidiously, in our own cultural moment. My current book project investigating martial identities and gender in early modern drama is supported by a SSHRC Insight Development grant. I am also working on representations of women in plays by John Fletcher, who was Shakespeare’s successor as playwright for the King’s Men. Since 2014 I have served as associate editor of the peer-reviewed journal Early Theatre.
Specializations
Early modern drama and literature; gender; women writers
Current Research
My research currently centres on early dramatic representations of soldiers. I am interested in cultural perceptions of soldierly identity – especially as they entwine with constructions of gender – at a time when soldiership was becoming newly professionalized, as evinced by the first significant proliferation of printed manuals in English pertaining to martial training and conduct. My works-in-progress stemming from this research include a book project, Staging Soldiers in Early Modern England, and a scholarly edition of John Fletcher’s play The Tragedy of Bonduca. This seventeenth-century play is the first known dramatic portrayal of the ancient Celtic warrior queen Boudica.
Selected Publications
- “The Heretical Woman, the ‘Raging Turk,’ and Martial Figures in Fletcher’s The Tamer Tamed and The Island Princess. Early Modern Literary Studies (forthcoming).
- “Fletcher’s Humorous Lieutenant, Soldierly Identity, and Disability.” The Ben Jonson Journal 32.2 (2025): 159-75.
- Sarah E. Johnson and Georgina Lucas, eds. Atrocity and Early Modern Drama. London: Bloomsbury, 2025.
- “The Erasure of War Crimes in John Fletcher’s Bonduca,” Atrocity and Early Modern Drama, ed. Johnson and Lucas, pp. 63-91.
- Sarah E. Johnson, ed., “The Caucasines, Emblem 52” by Hester Pulter (Poem 117, Amplifed Edition). The Pulter Project: Poet in the Making, edited by Leah Knight and Wendy Wall, 2025. https://pulterproject.northwestern.edu/poems/ae/the-caucasines-emblem-52...
- “Militant Complaint in Margaret Cavendish’s Bell in Campo.” Women’s Writing, 28.3 (2021):352-67.
- “Pride and Gender in Fletcher’s Bonduca.” Modern Philology 115.1 (2017): 80-104.
- Staging Women and the Soul-Body Dynamic in Early Modern England. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2014.
- "The Female Body as Soul in Queen Anna's Masques." SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 53.2 (2013): 357-77.
- "'A Spirit to Resist' and Female Eloquence in The TamerTamed." Shakespeare 7.3 (2011): 309-24.
- "'Away, Stand off, I Say': Women's Appropriations of Restraint and Constraint in The Birth of Merlin and The Devil Is an Ass." Early Modern Literary Studies 15.1 (2009): 30 paragraphs.
- "Female Bodies, Speech, and Silence in The Witch of Edmonton." Early Theatre 12.1 (2009): 69-91.
Teaching
Metaphors about writing in the early modern period liken texts to mirrors, feasts, contracts, and bouquets. These metaphors suggest approaches to narrative and methods of engaging with texts that fit with some of my aims in the classroom: to examine what a text reveals about our culture and society, and conversely what we project onto it; to approach texts collaboratively and with an appetite, as well as with an expectation for development and growth; to consider what demands a text might make on us as readers, and what it means to read and write responsibly; and to cultivate our capacity to appreciate literary creations as works of art.
Courses
- ENE 111-112/121-122: Introduction to Literary Studies and University Writing Skills
- ENE 211/212: Reading the Contemporary World
- ENE314: Shakespeare’s Peers
- ENE316: From Beowulf to Lancelot: Warriors, Visionaries, and the Medieval World
- ENE318: Medieval Roadtripping: The Canterbury Tales
- ENE428: Screening Shakespeare