We are happy to welcome a new member of staff, Honor Jackson, who is joining the department as assistante docteure in early modern English literature. In the autumn semester 2023, Honor Jackson will be teaching a BA proseminar on ‘Libertines and Libertinism in Seventeenth-Century English Literature’ (Wednesday, 17.15-18.45) – terms that in seventeenth-century England came to be associated with debauchery, recklessness, atheism, sexual profligacy and with the court and courtiers of King Charles II. This course will explore libertine poetry and restoration comedy, using the lenses of politics, philosophy, and gender studies in order to better understand how and why libertinism flourished in this period of English literature.

Honor Jackson holds degrees from the University of Leicester and the University of St Andrews and has recently completed her doctorate at the University of Neuchâtel on the topic of ‘Gender, Politics and the Utopian Impulse in Late Seventeenth-Century English Literature’.