Dr Lisa Walters
Senior Lecturer in Women’s Writing
School of Communication and Arts
Honours Coordinator
Centre for Western Civilisation
Researcher biography
Dr Walters obtained her doctorate and master’s degree from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland and her BA from the University of California Santa Cruz. Currently, she is working on an Oxford World Classics edition of Cavendish’s literary works. Her monograph entitled Margaret Cavendish: Gender, Science and Politics was published by Cambridge University Press in 2014 (paperback 2017). She is co-editor of Margaret Cavendish: An Interdisciplinary Perspective (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming) and is one of the joint editors of the Restoration section of the Palgrave Encyclopedia of Early Modern Women's Writing.
She has published articles on Cavendish, Shakespeare and early modern women in relation to science, philosophy, gender and political thought.
Previously, Dr Walters was a postdoctoral research fellow at Ghent University in Belgium. She has also held academic positions in England, America, and Scotland and has taught guest classes in France. Between studies, she worked in Tokyo, Japan. Currently, she serves on the Editorial Board of ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews and was recently President of the International Margaret Cavendish Society.
Book
Walters, Lisa (2014). Margaret Cavendish: gender, science and politics. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/cbo9781107588912
Book Chapters
Walters, Lisa (2023). Margaret Cavendish 1623-1673. Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800: Critical Discussion of the Works of Fifteenth-, Sixteenth-, Seventeenth-, and Eighteenth-Century Novelists, Poets, Playwrights, Philosophers, and Other Creative Writers. (pp. 171-177) edited by Jennifer Stock. Farmington Hills, Mi, United States: Gale.
Siegfried, Brandie R. and Walters, Lisa (2022). Introduction: the intellectual span of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle. Margaret Cavendish: an interdisciplinary perspective. (pp. 1-16) edited by Lisa Walters and Brandie R. Siegfried. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/9781108780780.001
Siegfried, Brandie R. and Walters, Lisa (2022). A new science for a new world: Margaret Cavendish on the question of poverty. 1650-1850: Ideas, aesthetics, and inquiries in the early modern era. (pp. 21-36) edited by Kevin L. Cope. Lewisburg, PA, United States: Bucknell University Press. doi: 10.2307/j.ctv2vt04cz.5
Miller, Naomi J. and Walters, Lisa (2021). Reframing the picture: screening early modern women for modern audiences. World-making Renaissance women. (pp. 70-86) edited by Pamela S. Hammons and Brandie R. Siegfried. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/9781108923385.005
Walters, Lisa (2021). Jones, Katherine, Lady Ranelagh. The Palgrave encyclopedia of early modern women's writing. (pp. 1-6) edited by Patricia Pender and Rosalind Smith. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-01537-4_190-1
Walters, Lisa (2020). Epicurus and gender in the British Newcastle Circle: Charleton, Hobbes And Margaret Cavendish. A companion to the Cavendishes. (pp. 181-197) edited by Lisa Hopkins and Tom Rutter. Leeds, York, United Kingdom: Arc Humanities Press. doi: 10.2307/j.ctv22d4zg6.16
Walters, Lisa (2019). Margaret Cavendish, Poems, and Fancies (1653). Handbook of English Renaissance literature. (pp. 594-614) edited by Ingo Berensmeyer. Berlin, Germany: De Gruyter. doi: 10.1515/9783110444889-031
Walters, Lisa (2019). The philosophy and literature of childhood cognition: John Milton and Margaret Cavendish. Literary cultures and medieval and early modern childhoods. (pp. 203-218) edited by Naomi J. Miller and Diane Purkiss. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-14211-7_13
Walters, Lisa (2009). Gender subversion in the science of Margaret Cavendish. Ashgate Critical Essays on Women Writers in England, 1550-1700: Margaret Cavendish. (pp. 251-262) edited by Sara H. Mendelson. Abingdon, Oxon, United Kingdom: Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9781315264707-27
Walters, Lisa (2006). Cavendish's letters of subversion. The female wits: women and gender in restoration literature and culture. (pp. 281-294) edited by Pilar Cuder Domínguez, Zenón Luis Martínez and Juan A. Prieto Pablos. Huelva, Spain: University of Huelva.
Journal Articles
Moriarty, Clare Marie and Walters, Lisa (2023). Berkeley's gland tour into speculative fiction part 2: Margaret Cavendish and Berkeley's attitudes towards women. Philosophy Compass, 18 (4) e12909. doi: 10.1111/phc3.12909
Moriarty, Clare Marie and Walters, Lisa (2023). Berkeley's gland tour into speculative fiction part 1: Homer, Descartes and Pope. Philosophy Compass, 18 (4) e12908. doi: 10.1111/phc3.12908
Ferrier, Sean and Walters, Lisa (2021). Hamlet and Lucretian anxiety. Shakespeare, 18 (2), 176-196. doi: 10.1080/17450918.2021.1981991
Walters, Lisa (2020). Margaret Cavendish, Poems and Fancies with The Animal Parliament, edited by Brandie R. Siegfried, Tempe, AZ, Iter Press & Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2018, 462 pp., $59.95 (paperback), ISBN 978-0-86698-593-2. The Seventeenth Century, 35 (2), 259-261. doi: 10.1080/0268117x.2019.1654406
Walters, Lisa (2019). A Description of the Blazing World. Sara H. Mendelson, ed.. Early Modern Women, 13 (2), 110-113. doi: 10.1353/emw.2019.0031
Walters, Lisa (2018). The Unnatural Tragedy by Margaret Cavendish. Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, 1660-1700, 42 (2), 135-137. doi: 10.1353/rst.2018.0010
Ferrier, Sean and Walters, Lisa (2017). Review of Cavendish, Woolf, and the Cypriot Goddess Natura by Jim Fitzmaurice, performed at the Centre of Visual Arts and Research, Nicosia, Cyprus. Early Modern Literary Studies, 19 (2).
Walters, Lisa (2016). Monstrous births and imaginations: authorship and folklore in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Renaissance and Reformation, 39 (1), 115-146. doi: 10.33137/rr.v39i1.26545
Walters, Lisa (2015). Review of Utopian Negotiation: Aphra Behn & Margaret Cavendish, Oddvar Holmesland. Early Modern Women, 10 (1), 216-219. doi: 10.1353/emw.2015.0013
Walters, Lisa (2014). Optics and authorship in Margaret Cavendish’s Observations and The Blazing World. Viator, 45 (3), 377-393. doi: 10.1484/j.viator.5.102933
Walters, Lisa (2013). Omitted edition of Margaret Cavendish's Philosophical and Physical Opinions (1663). Notes and Queries, 60 (4), 542-545. doi: 10.1093/notesj/gjt201
Walters, Lisa (2013). Oberon and masculinity in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews, 26 (3), 157-160. doi: 10.1080/0895769x.2013.779172
Walters, Elizabeth (2013). Gender and civil war politics in Margaret Cavendish’s “Assaulted and Pursued Chastity”. Early Modern Women, 8, 207-240. doi: 10.1086/emw23617851
Walters, Lisa (2010). “[N]ot subject to our sense”: Margaret Cavendish's fusion of renaissance science, magic and fairy lore. Women's Writing, 17 (3), 413-431. doi: 10.1080/09699080903162039
Burton, John, Walters, Lisa and Trill, Suzanne (2009). VIII: The Earlier Seventeenth Century: General. The Year's Work in English Studies, 88 (1), 530-552. doi: 10.1093/ywes/map012
Burton, John R. and Walters, Lisa (2008). VIII: The Earlier Seventeenth Century: General and Prose. The Year's Work in English Studies, 87 (1), 536-549. doi: 10.1093/ywes/man001
Vella Bonavita, Helen, Walters, Lisa and Trill, Suzanne (2007). VIII: The Earlier Seventeenth Century: General and Prose. The Year's Work in English Studies, 86 (1), 475-496. doi: 10.1093/ywes/mam008
Walters, Lisa (2006). Hero Chalmers. Royalist Women Writers 1650-1689. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004. xii+228pp.. Early Modern Literary Studies.
Bonavita, Helen Vella and Walters, Lisa (2006). VIII: The Earlier Seventeenth Century: General, Women's Writing. The Year's Work in English Studies, 85 (1), 449-476. doi: 10.1093/ywes/mal008
Vella Bonavita, Helen and Walters, Lisa (2005). VIII: The Earlier Seventeenth Century: General, Prose, Women's Writing. The Year's Work in English Studies, 84 (1), 471-498. doi: 10.1093/ywes/mai008
Walters, Lisa (2004). Gender subversion in the science of Margaret Cavendish. Early Modern Literary Studies, 14.
Doelman, James and Walters, Lisa (2004). VIII The Earlier Seventeenth Century: General, Prose, Women's Writing. The Year's Work in English Studies, 83 (1), 401-431. doi: 10.1093/ywes/mah008
Newspaper Article
Walters, Lisa (2021, 11 18). Science fiction is philosophy IAI News