Heidi Craig
Research
My research divides into three main areas:
Digital Humanities & Bibliography: I create DH projects and theorize about DH. I'm the editor of two large-scale digital databases, the World Shakespeare Bibliography, and Early Modern Dramatic Paratexts, which I co-created and co-edit with Sonia Massai. With various co-authors, I've written about digital bibliography and digital pedagogy. I'm embarking on a large-scale project on digital materiality which engages in critical inquiry with and of the digital. This project, provisionally titled "Finite Digital Humanities," draws on the theories and community practices of minimal computing, permacomputing, digital degrowth and others to push against the myths of digital immateriality, perpetual growth and infinite resources. "Finite DH" will propose a set of principles and best practices to create a more just and sustainable DH for both individual scholars and infrastructures.
Rag Collection & Textual Culture: My interest in digital materiality emerges from my work on materiality related to writing, seemingly abstract thought and the so-called "life of the mind." I've published two articles on rag collectors in pre-modern Europe, whose labour of collecting rags for paper production enabled the printing of books before the wide-spread adoption of wood pulp paper. I'm working on my second monograph, Working with Waste: Writing and Scavenging from Rags to E-Waste which examines the interdependence of waste workers and writers from the early modern period to the present.
Early Modern Literature & Culture: Much of my work is rooted in the study of the literary, dramatic and cultural practices of early modern England. I'm the author of Theatre Closure and the Paradoxical Rise of English Renaissance Drama in the Civil Wars (Cambridge University Press, 2023), which examines the lasting impact of the theatrical prohibition of 1642 to 1660 on English dramatic culture. This monograph argues that the death of live theatre in the 1640s and 1650s led to the birth of English Renaissance Drama as a genre and field.
Below, you'll find information about my other publications and projects in my three major research areas:
Digital Humanities & Bibliography
“A Rationale of a Trans-Inclusive Bibliography,” co-authored with Laura Estill and Kris L. May. Textual Cultures 16.2 (Fall 2023): 1-28.
“Finding and Accessing Shakespeare Scholarship in the Global South: Digital Research and Bibliography,” co-authored with Laura Estill, in Digital Shakespeares from the Global South, edited by Amrita Sen (Palgrave, 2022): pp. 17-36.
“Browse as Interface in Shakespeare’s Texts and the World Shakespeare Bibliography Online,” co-authored with Laura Estill, in The Routledge Handbook of Shakespeare and Interface, edited by Paul Budra and Clifford Werier (Routledge, 2022), pp. 219-34.
“Primary Source Literacy in the COVID-19 Era and Beyond,” co-authored with Kevin M. O’Sullivan, portal: Libraries and the Academy 22.1 (2022): 93-109.
Rag Collection & Textual Culture
“Paper,” in The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Early Modern Women’s Writing, edited by Patricia Pender and Rosalind Smith, series editors Helen Smith and Ben Wilkinson-Turnbull (Palgrave, forthcoming).
“Rag Women and Early Modern Paper Production,” in Women’s Labour and Early Modern Book History in England, edited by Valerie Wayne (Arden Shakespeare, 2020), pp. 29-46.
“Rag, Rag-pickers, and Paper Making in Early Modern England,” Literature Compass (2019): 1-11.
Early Modern Literature & Culture
“'Chief of the Second Rate': James Shirley and Dramatic Value," in The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Literary Evaluation, edited by Kevin De Ornellas, Richard Bradford, and Madelena Gonzalez (Wiley-Blackwell, 2024): 259-270.
“A Century of English Drama: Restoration Reprints of Tudor Drama," in Reprints and Revivals of Early Modern Drama, edited by Eoin Price and Harry Newman (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
“Printed Drama in the Civil Wars and Interregnum," in The Routledge Encyclopedia of the Renaissance World, edited by Kristen Poole, series editor Lauren Shohet (Routledge, 2022).
“The King’s Servants in Printed Paratexts, 1594-1695," Huntington Library Quarterly 85.1 (2022): 151-69.
"'Villainies of that damnd Keeper’: Caregiving, Criminality, and Contagion in Early Modern England," Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 16.1 (2021): 72-81.
“Celebrity Skulls: Hamlet in the Civil Wars and Interregnum," in Shakespeare and Civil Unrest in Britain and the United States, edited by Mark Bayer and Joseph J. Navitsky (Routledge, 2021), pp. 14-29.
“Rethinking Prologue on Page and Stage," co-authored with Sonia Massai, in Rethinking Theatrical Documents, edited by Tiffany Stern (Arden Shakespeare, 2020), pp. 91-110.
"Missing Shakespeare, 1642-1660," English Literary Renaissance 49.1 (2019): 116-44.