Neighbourly Relationships in Early Modern Drama: A Conversation in Dr Iman Sheeha
Episode 189:
For today’s guest episode it is my pleasure to welcome Dr Iman Sheeha to the podcast. Her book ‘Neighbourly Relations in early modern drama has been published recently so it was a great opportunity to talk to her about her research after she had just completed a summer tour of conferences.
Her work is a close examination of neighbourly relationships in early modern English drama, placing a select number of plays alongside other contemporary materials such as wills, pamphlets and sermons and other sources that give us a glimpse of the early modern lived life. The plays span the period between the 1550s and the 1620s, belong to different genres, were aimed at different audiences, and were written for different kinds of playhouses, which allows for conclusions to be drawn about the way genre shapes the treatment of neighbourly relationships, as well as revealing continuities and changes during the period.
Iman Sheeha is a Senior Lecturer in Shakespeare and Early Modern Literature at Brunel University of London and co-General Editor of New Mermaids Classic Plays series. She has wide-ranging interests within the fields of Shakespeare and Early Modern Literature, including gender, race, devotional literature, service, and domesticity and she works with PhD candidates working on these and related topics.
She is the author of two books: Household Servants in Early Modern Domestic Tragedy, and Neighbourly Relationships in Early Modern Drama. She has co-edited a special issue on liminal domestic spaces for Early Modern Literary Studies. Her research has appeared or is forthcoming in Shakespeare Survey, Early Theatre, The Journal of Early Modern Cultural Studies, Early Modern Literary Studies, and American Notes and Queries and she contributed a chapter to People and Piety: Devotional Writing in Print and Manuscript in Early Modern England (MUP, 2019).’ She has written the introduction for the Oxford World’s Classics edition of ‘The Tragedy of Master Arden of Faversham’ which is due to be published by Oxford University Press in April, 2026.
Links to books by Iman Sheeha
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Iman Sheeha
Dr.
Iman Sheeha is a Senior Lecturer in Shakespeare and Early Modern Literature at Brunel University of London and co-General Editor of New Mermaids. She is the author of two books: Household Servants in Early Modern Domestic Tragedy (2020) and Neighbourly Relationships in Early Modern Drama: Staged Communities (2025). She has co-edited a special issue on liminal domestic spaces for Early Modern Literary Studies (2020). Her research has appeared or is forthcoming in Shakespeare Survey, Shakespeare, Early Theatre, Cahiers Élisabéthains, the Journal of Early Modern Cultural Studies, Early Modern Literary Studies, and American Notes and Queries. She contributed a chapter to People and Piety: Devotional Writing in Print and Manuscript in Early Modern England (MUP, 2019).’