Karin Sellberg, 'Fruitful Circularities'

Karin Sellberg is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at The University of Queensland and an Associate Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions. She is particularly interested in feminist and queer readings of Shakespeare’s plays, and in early modern science and theories of time and embodiment. This paper, which was delivered at a symposium on ‘Shakespeare and the Body Politic’ at The University of Queensland on 28 November 2016, discusses the function of sanguinity and virility in Shakespeare’s 'Macbeth' and 'King Lear'. It argues that the health of physical as well as political bodies in the plays relied on a generative circulation of blood.