Jamie Gianoutsos

Knott Academic Center
Room 106

Jamie Gianoutsos, Ph.D., is interested in the intersection of republican thought, gender, and culture in the Anglo-republican tradition, which shaped 17th century England and our US founding. She is author of The Rule of Manhood: Tyranny, Gender, and Classical Republicanism in England, 1603-1660 (Cambridge University Press). Dr. Gianoutsos joined the Mount's history department in Spring 2013, offering courses in the Western Civilization sequence of core curriculum and electives including Tudor and Stuart Britain, The French Revolution, The Public Sphere in Early Modern England, Historical Methods, The Politics of Gender in Early Modern Europe, and Senior Seminar. Gianoutsos also serves as the Director of the Office of Competitive Fellowships at Mount St. Mary's University.

• Ph.D. and M.A., History, The Johns Hopkins University (2014)
• M.Phil., Political Thought and Intellectual History, University of Cambridge, England (2008)
• M.A., English: Reconceiving the Renaissance, The Queen's University of Belfast, Northern Ireland (2007)
• B.A., Political Science and Great Texts of the Western Tradition, Baylor University (2006)

• Marshall Scholarship, British Parliament, 2006-2008.
• Short-Term Research Fellowship, Renaissance Society of America, Spring 2021.
• Honors Program Outstanding Service Award, Mount St. Mary’s University, Fall 2017.
• Faculty Summer Research Grants, Mount St. Mary’s University, 2018; 2015.
• Mellon Pre-Dissertation Fellowship, Institute of Historical Research, Summer 2010.
• Short-term Fellowship, The Huntington Library, April 2010.
• Graduate Fellowship for Research in Europe, Charles Singleton Center, April 2010.
• George and Sylvia Kagan Graduate Fellowship, The Johns Hopkins University, 2008.
• Phi Beta Kappa, Zeta Chapter, Baylor University.

Early Modern Europe, especially Britain; Intellectual and Gender History; Renaissance Literature; Medieval History and Literature; Great Books: Classical to Contemporary

Book

The Rule of Manhood: Tyranny, Gender, and Classical Republicanism in England, 1603-1660. Studies in Early Modern British History Series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.

Book Abstract

Through stories of lustful and incestuous rulers, of republican revolution and of unnatural crimes against family, seventeenth-century Englishmen imagined the problem of political tyranny through the prism of classical history. This fueled debates over the practices of their own kings, the necessity of revolution, and the character of English republican thought. The Rule of Manhood explores the dynamic and complex languages of tyranny and masculinity that arose through these classical stories and their imaginative appropriation. Discerning the neglected connection between concepts of power and masculinity in early Stuart England, the book shows both how stories of ancient tyranny were deployed in the dialogue around monarchy and rule between 1603 and 1660 and the extent to which these shaped English classical republican thought. Drawing on extensive research in contemporary printed texts, The Rule of Manhood weaves together the histories of politics and manhood to make a bold claim: that the fundamental purpose of English republicanism was not liberty or virtue, but the realization of manhood for its citizens.

Articles and Book Chapters

1. “Loyalty to a Nero? Publicising Puritan Persecution in the 1630s.” Loyalty to the Monarchs of Late Medieval and Early Modern Britain, c.1400-1688. Eds. Matthew Ward and Matthew Hefferan, 174-99. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.
2. “Sapientia and Stultitia in John Colet's Commentary on First Corinthians.” Reformation & Renaissance Review vol. 21 (2019): 109-25.
3. “‘A New Discovery’ of Charles Hoole: Method and Practice in Seventeenth-Century English Education.” History of Education 48.1 (2019): 1-18.
4. “Criticizing Kings: Gender, Classical History, and Subversive Writing in Seventeenth-Century England.” Renaissance Quarterly 70.4 (Winter 2017): 1366-1396.
5. “Locke and Rousseau: Early Childhood Education.” The Pulse 4.1 (Fall 2006).

Book-in-Progress

The “Propagation of Liberty”: Marchamont Nedham and the Classical Republican Tradition.

This monograph explores the thought and legacy of republican theorist and pioneering journalist Marchamont Nedham. It considers three principles from Nedham’s writings which have been fundamental to the Anglo-republican tradition and our democracy: first, the early practice of the free press, and the ways that protections for the liberty of expression developed alongside early arguments for the liberty of conscience and religious toleration in a country that historically persecuted political and religious dissenters; second, the idea of “republican bodies” – how early republican writers such as Nedham theorized the expansion and limits of republican citizenship through the alleged attributes of physical bodies, including gender, racial characteristics, and the “natural” propensity for virtue; third, the republican idea of the “propagation of liberty,” which shaped colonial practices, the development of particular liberties in British colonies, and also early racial thought. The final chapter of this project considers the influence of these three historic principles – the freedom of the press, republican bodies, and the propagation of liberty – on the American founding, and especially the writings of John Adams, who wrote a very lengthy commentary on Nedham’s Excellencie, weighing which form of popular representation would best protect the liberty of citizens.

Select Presentations

• “Were Republics Designed Only for Men?” Association of Marshall Scholars Presentation, December 2020.
• Panel Commentator, Body, Personhood and Family Relations in Early Modern England, 1600-1820. North American Conference on British Studies, Vancouver, October 2019.
• “The Tyrannical Womb: Hereditary Monarchy and the Maternal Imagination in Seventeenth-Century England.” Mid-Atlantic Conference for British Studies, Maryland, April 2018.
• “Loyalty to a Nero? Publicising Puritan Persecution in the 1630s.” Loyalty to the British Monarchs, c. 1400-1688, University of Nottingham, United Kingdom, January 2018.
• “Marchamont Nedham and the Masculine Republic.” North American Conference on British Studies, Washington DC, November 2016.
• Invited Commentator for Mary E. Fissell, “Bodies that Work: Three Perspectives on the History of Maternity,” the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, December 2015.
• “Honor, Valor, and Revolution: The Masculinity of Junius Brutus in Elizabethan and Jacobean England.” Sixteenth Century Conference, Vancouver, Canada, October 2015.
• “‘So much power and piety in one’: Oliver Cromwell and the Question of Masculinity.” Mid-Atlantic Conference of British Studies, Baltimore, March 2015.
• “A Funeral for a Hair of Nero's Mistress: George Chapman's Criticism of Monarchy.” Western Conference on British Studies, Calgary, Canada, October 2014.
• “John Milton, Divorce, and the Republican Household.” Sixteenth Century Conference, San Juan, Puerto Rico, October 2013.
• “A Chaste Virginia: Tyranny and the Corruption of Law in Jacobean England.” Ancients and Moderns: the 81st Anglo-American Conference of Historians, London, United Kingdom, July 2012.

See Gianoutsos's work as Director of the Office of Competitive Fellowships.