Dr Chloe Houston

I work on the representation of cross-cultural encounter in the early modern period. I am interested in how different worlds, places, peoples and religions were depicted in early modern English writing, and especially travel literature and drama. My first monograph, The Renaissance Utopia (2013), was a study of ideal-state writing from More’s Utopia to the Restoration, and my second, Persia in Early Modern English Drama, 1530-1699: The Imagined Empire (2023), explored the depiction of the Persian empire on the early modern stage. I have also edited two collections of essays: New Worlds Reflected: Travel and Utopia in the Early Modern Period (2010) and, with Sophie Lemercier-Goddard and Ladan Niayesh, Writing Distant Travels and Linguistic Otherness in Early Modern England (c. 1550–1660) (forthcoming, 2024). With Eva Johanna Holmberg I co-edited a special issue of the journal Journeys: The International Journal of Travel & Travel Writing on ‘Shaping Strangers in Early Modern English Travel Writing’, and I have contributed chapters and articles to various publications, including Renaissance Studies, Studies in English Literature, Seventeenth Century, Utopian Studies, and Studies in Travel Writing. My first novel, The Retreat, co-authored under the pseudonym Frances Wise, is forthcoming with 4th Estate in 2025.