Samuel Fullerton

Bio

I am a historian of early modern Europe. In particular, my research focuses on the political culture of seventeenth-century Britain, and I have written extensively about the relationship between print, polemic, and civil war as it evolved across England and the British North American colonies in that period. My first book, Sexual Politics in Revolutionary England (Manchester, 2024), examines the transformation of explicit sex-talk from a cultural taboo into a premier political language during and after the upheavals of the English Revolution (1640-60). Elsewhere, I have published on such topics as transatlantic anti-puritanism, the politics of libel, and early modern proto-pornography. Many of these themes feature in the classes I teach at UNT, which include surveys of the Renaissance and Reformation as well as a course on the six wives of Henry VIII.

I am currently working on two new book-length studies. The first is a history of English political libel during the 1640s; the second examines the political and personal rivalry of two British ambassadors who competed for diplomatic advantage in Paris during the mid-seventeenth century. Ultimately, these works-in-progress are intended to lay groundwork for another major long-term project on the comparative transnational history of print, libel, and the state in England and France from the beginning of the seventeenth century to the twin culminating crises of the British civil wars and the French Fronde (1648-53).

Highlights

early modern Europe; Atlantic world; gender and sexuality; print culture

Recent publications

Sexual Politics in Revolutionary England (Manchester, 2024)

"The 'Holy Sister' Anatomized: Religious Polemic and Erotic Writing in England, 1640-1660", Journal of Modern History 96, no. 3 (2024), pp. 545-76

"Licensing Libel in Seventeenth-Century England: John White's First Century of Scandalous, Malignant Priests in Context/s", Historical Research 96, no. 273 (2023), pp. 331-52