Joseph Kidney is currently an MA student in the Department of English at McGill University, where he began his graduate studies in 2014. His research focuses on Early Modern literature, especially William Shakespeare and John Webster, with an interest in change and conversion along the mental gradient of animal nature and reason, and along the physical gradient of shape-changing. Having completed an undergraduate double major degree at McGill in English Literature and Organismal Biology, he explores the way in which Early Modern literature engages in discussions of humanity and animality, and how this engagement can serve as a means of addressing the questions that are raised by literary metamorphosis and biological evolution.
