Jerry Brotton, BA (Sussex) MA (Essex) PhD (London)

Professor of Renaissance Studies
Tel: +44 (0)20 7882 3197
email: j.r.brotton@qmul.ac.uk

Research interests

Renaissance visual and material culture
East-west cultural exchange, particularly Anglo-Islamic
Shakespeare
Early modern cartography and travel

Jerry Brotton's research focuses on artistic, material and intellectual exchange between different cultures in the period 1500-1700. Most recently, he published The Sale of the Late King's Goods, a Leverhulme-funded study of the formation, dispersal and partial restitution of King Charles I's art collection, which was short-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction (2006), as well as the THES Young Academic Author of the Year Award (2006) and the Hessel-Tiltmann Prize for History (2007).

He has written books on early modern cartography and the construction of imperial space (Trading Territories), as well as collaborative work with Professor Lisa Jardine on artistic exchange between Christian and Islamic communities (Global Interests). His book The Renaissance Bazaar was widely reviewed as a contribution to the growing understanding of the part Islam played in the European Renaissance. His book The Renaissance: A Very Short Introduction (2006) has now been translated into five languages, including Chinese. He is currently completing a book on the history of global cartography from the Greeks to Google Earth, which is due to be published by Viking Penguin in 2011. The project is supported by an AHRC Research Leave Scheme grant which will run from September 2010 to January 2011. He is also presenting a three-part BBC television series on the history of maps, to be broadcast on BBC4 in late spring 2010.

Longer term, he is working on the representation of Islam in Shakespeare and Anglo-Islamic relations in the period 1550-1650. He is a reviewer and feature writer for The Sunday Times, The Sunday Telegraph,and BBC History Magazine, and is a Trustee of the J.B. Harley Trust. He holds positions on several editorial and advisory boards, and in recent years he has been awarded fellowships by the Leverhulme Trust and the AHRC. He is also a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters. Jerry Brotton welcomes prospective PhD students interested in undertaking research in all aspects of Renaissance literature, culture, and history, particularly in the areas of east-west travel and cultural exchange, geography, and Shakespeare.

Recent Books
The Sale of the Late King's Goods: Charles I and his Art Collection (Macmillan, 2006)

The Renaissance: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2006)

The Renaissance Bazaar: From the Silk Road to Michelangelo (Oxford, 2002)

Global Interests: Renaissance Art between East and West, co-authored with Lisa Jardine (Reaktion and Cornell, 2000)

Trading Territories: Mapping the Early Modern World (Reaktion and Cornell, 1997)

Recent Articles
‘The Spanish acquisition of King Charles I’s art collection: the letters of Alonso de Cardenas, 1649-51’, Journal of the History of Collections, 20, 1 (2008), pp. 1-16 (co-authored with David McGrath).

‘Afterword’, in Andrew Hadfield and Matthew Dimmock (eds.), The Religions of the Book: Christian Perceptions, 1400-1600 (Palgrave, 2008), pp. 195-202.

‘From flower to foetus: the evolution of Marc Quinn’, in Marc Quinn: Evolution, exhibition catalogue (White Cube Gallery, 2008), pp. 3-7.

‘Ideal City’, The Art Quarterly (summer, 2008), pp. 52-5.

‘When Art meets History: The Sale of King Charles I’s Art Collection’, Historically Speaking: The Bulletin of the Historical Society, 8:6 (2006), 11-13

‘Buying the Renaissance: Prince Charles’s art purchases in Madrid, 1623’, in The Spanish Match: Prince Charles’s Journey to Madrid, 1623, ed by Alex Samson (Ashgate, London, 2006), pp. 9-26

‘Printing the Map, Making a Difference: Mapping the Cape of Good Hope, 1488-1652’, in Geography and Revolution, ed. by David Livingstone and Charles Withers (Chicago University Press, 2006), pp 137-59

‘St George between East and West’, in Re-Orienting the Renaissance, ed by Gerald MacLean (Palgrave, 2005), pp 50-65
‘The Art of Restoration: King Charles II and the Restitution of the English Royal Art Collection’, The Court Historian, 10:2 (2005), 115-36

‘The Geography of Tragedy’, in The Blackwell Companion to Shakespearean Tragedy, ed by Richard Dutton and Jean Howard (Blackwell, Oxford, 2003), pp 219-40

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