Nina Taunton is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at Brunel University. Her work centres upon formations of cultural identity in the early modern period by a very specific kind of education and by the exigencies of war and gender. It examines the instability of geographical, corporeal and gender boundaries from a variety of early modern perspectives and draws upon relevant postmodern theories. Her methodology is broadly intertextual and interdisciplinary, combining literary material with theories of gender, space, containment, concepts of knowledge and power, and historical events. Her research involves the examination of new material in manuscript form. She is interested in destabilisations of customary perceptions of early modern education, war and sexuality in ways which provide new perspectives on familiar and non-familiar writings of the period.

Her publications to date fall into four thematic areas:

the early modern university curriculum and its role in the formation of the 'rational', exclusively male psyche. Three articles arising from her PhD thesis, each of which reappraises (from different perspectives) the dramatic output of two major playwrights, Christopher Marlowe and John Fletcher, in relation to the pattern and aim of the sixteenth-century Cambridge curriculum. One of these has been translated into Greek for inclusion in a volume of essays on the Faust myth, and was published in Athens.

subversive female sexuality, comprising one article, 'Patterns of Sadomasochism...' in a high-profile refereed electronic journal, run from Erfurt, Germany) and 'Unlawful Presences ...', a contribution to a volume of essays.

the warrior ethic and the formation of heroic masculinity in sixteenth-century discourses of war, and the interconnection between public events and early modern writing. Monograph, 2001. Fictions of the body; occupational orderings of the body in the Elizabethan army. Contributor and co-editor of volume of essays, 2000.

1590s Drama and Militarism: Portrayals of War in Marlowe, Chapman and Shakespeare's Henry V. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001, ISBN 0 7546 0274 5.

Fictions of Old Age in Early Modern Literature and Culture, Routledge, 2007, ISBN 0-415-32473-4

The Body in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Writing. Eds. Darryll Grantley & Nina Taunton Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000, containing essay on Caesar and Pompey, see below. ISBN 0 7546 0115 3

The unifying concerns of the following essays are in the broad area of the politics of cultural identity.

'Did John Fletcher the playwright go to university?' Notes and Queries, Vol.235 No.2 (June 1990), 170-172

'University Education, Playwriting, and Biography: Fletcher and Marlowe', Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama, XXXIII (1994), 63-97. ISSN 0098-647X

'Patterns of Sadomasochism and Fashion-Fetishism in The Taming of the Shrew', Erfurt Electronic Studies in English, September (1996), 1-12 http:/webdoc.sub.gwdg.de/edoc/ia/eese/eese.html

'Aspects of Watchfulness and Command in 1590s Discourses of War', Erfurt Electronic Studies in English, October (1998), 1-20 http:/webdoc.sub.gwdg.de/edoc/ia/eese/eese.html

'Camp Scenes and Generals: Shakespeare's Henry V and the State of the Art of War', The Journal of the Shakespeare Society of Southern Africa, Vol. 13, (2001), 41-52

'Night Watch: The nocturnal camp scenes in Shakespeare's Henry V and 1590s militarism' in Acts du colloque La Nuit Chez Shakespeare et ses contemporains: l'invisible presence, 23-24 Octobre 1998, Recherches Valenciennoises (Presses Universitaire de Valenciennes, 2000) ISSN 1297-9287

'King Lear, King James and the Gunpowder Treason of 1605', Renaissance Studies, Vol.17 No.4 (forthcoming, 2003)

‘The Triumphs of Age: All’s Well that Ends Well’, Journal for the Studies of British Cultures, Special Issue, Vol.13 No.2/2006
ISSN: 0944-9094 

'Food, Time and Age: Falstaff's Dietaries and Tropes of Nourishment in The Comedy of Errors', Shakespeare Jahrbuch Band 145/2009, 91-105
 

'Scaling Olympus' Top versus Freshmen's Suppositions': Marlowe's Faustus and Opposing Systems of Knowledge' in Faoist: I Mageia Tis Filosofias I Filosofia Tis Mageias. Epimeleia echdosiz Theodosioz Pelegriniz. Panepistimio Atheinon: Ellinika Grammata, 1994, 205-228. ISBN 960-344-036-1. This has been translated into Greek.

'A Camp 'well planted': encamped bodies in 1590s military discourses and Chapman's Caesar and Pompey' in The Body in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Culture. Eds. Darryll Grantley & Nina Taunton. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000, 83-95. ISBN 0 7546 0115 3

'Unlawful Presences: The politics of military space and the problem of women in Tamburlaine' in Literature, Mapping and the Politics of Space in Early Modern Britain. Eds. Andrew Gordon & Bernhard Klein. Cambridge University Press, August 2001, 138-154. ISBN HB/PPC 0521803772

‘Time’s whirligig: images of old age in Coriolanus, Francis Bacon and Thomas Newton’ in Growing Old in Early Modern Europe, ed. Erin J. Campbell. Ashgate, 2004
ISBN 0-7546-5083-9 

'Planning Ahead: A Future for Old Age in Dialogue of Comfort, Henry IV Parts One and Two and All’s Well That Ends Well' in The Uses of the Future in Early Modern Europe edited by Andrea Brady and Emily Butterworth with a Foreword by Peter Burke (Routledge, London and New York, 2009)
 

Harriot, Marlowe and the Art of War, The Durham Thomas Harriot Seminar Occasional Paper No. 11 (1993), 1-44. ISBN 1 870268 70 9

Watching the Watch: Surveillance of the Camp in Sixteenth-Century Discourses of War, The Durham Thomas Harriot Seminar Occasional Paper No. 26 (December 1998), 1-40. ISBN 1 870268 70 9

Curtis C. Breight. Surveillance, Militarism and Drama in the Elizabethan Era. Hampshire & London: MacMillan Press Ltd, 1996, xii + 348pp. in Renaissance Studies Spring (1998), 466-471. ISSN 0269-1213

Emily c. Bartels. Spectacles of Strangeness: Imperialism, Alienation, and Marlowe. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993 in Renaissance Quarterly Autumn (1996), 648-649

Review of ‘Shakespeare’s Military Language’ for the Shakespeare Yearbook, 2006

Review of Patricia Cahill, Unto the Breach: Martial Formations, Historical Trauma, and the Early Modern Stage in Renaissance Quarterly, Summer 2009

Block review, page spread in THES Issue No 9 June 1 2001 of Andrew Hadfield. The English Renaissance 1500-1620. London: Blackwell, 2001. A Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture. Ed. Michael Hattaway. London: Blackwell, 2000. The Cambridge Companion to Ben Jonson. Eds. Richard Harp and Stanley Stewart. Cambridge University Press, 2000. 'Turn of the Shrew?' Skin Two, Issue 15, 90-94 ISSN 0-9518268-9-1

Co-editor of special Renaissance issue of EnterText 3.1, 2003.

Englisches-seminar, Universitat Munster - 5 May 1994: Marlowe's Tamburlaine and sixteenth century discourses of war

Universitat Erlangen-Nurnberg - 16 July 1998: Women in scenes of war: Tamburlaine and the 1590s military camp.

High Wycombe - Bucks. College of Higher Ed. - 13 March 1996. Camps and Commanders: military surveillance, Foucault and Shakespeare's Henry V.

Centre for English Studies, Seminar on Shakespeare and War, 10 Nov 2003. Camp scenes and generals: Shakespeare's Henry V and the state of the art of war.

Round-table speaker at postgraduate conference ‘Enmity and Justice’, Birkbeck, June 2004

Nov 2005 University of Gloucester, Cheltenham: guest lecture on ‘The Triumphs of Age: All’s Well that Ends Well’

Speaker on panel ‘Drafting Shakespeare’ which included Ken Adelman (adviser to Bush and Rumsfeld) at the Shakespeare Association of America, annual conference, Philadelphia, 2006
 

Co-organiser of Bodily Fictions Conference, sponsored by Brunel University College 8-10 September 1995. Paper Presented: Patterns of sadomasochism and fashion-fetishism in The Taming of the Shrew

Chair of Session at International Conference for the quatercentenary of the death of Christopher Marlowe, held at the University of Kent at Canterbury, July 1993.

London Renaissance Seminar, 13 december 1995; entire session on War

Chair of entire afternoon session ( four papers) of La Nuit Chez Shakespeare conference, Valenciennes, 23-24 Oct 1998

Paper presented: Night Watch: The nocturnal camp scenes in Shakespeare's Henry V and 1590s militarism (requested for publication volume, see above.)