Dr Katie Bank

Department of History
Leverhulme Early Career Fellow

Katie Bank is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Department of History at the University of Birmingham researching musical-visual culture in early modern England. Her research reflects an interdisciplinary attention to the role of music and music making within the intellectual history of early modern England, particularly music's intersection with natural philosophy, the passions, and concepts of sense perception. She has published articles in journals such as Early Music, Renaissance Studies, and The Hakluyt Society Journal, and has recently published her first book, Knowledge Building in Early Modern English Music (Routledge, 2020).

Qualifications

  • 2016 Doctor of Philosophy, Royal Holloway University of London (musicology)  
  • 2012 Master of Music, King's College London (musicology)                            
  • 2007 Master of Teaching, University of Southern California (education)     
  • 2005 Bachelor of Arts, Bowdoin College (history and music double major, English literature minor)

Biography

Katie Bank is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Birmingham in the Department of History. Her work reflects an interdisciplinary attention to the role of recreational song and visual culture within the intellectual history of early modern England, particularly music's intersection with natural philosophy, the passions, and concepts of sense perception. Publications include a monograph, Knowledge Building in Early Modern English Music (Routledge, 2021) as well as articles in journals such as Early Music, Journal of the Hakluyt Society, Arts Journal, and Renaissance Studies. She is co-editor of Byrd Studies in the Twenty-First Century (Clemson, 2023) and has recently discussed her work as a guest on podcasts and radio, including BBC Radio 4. She has been awarded grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities/Newberry Library, Arts Council England, the Leverhulme Trust, AHRC, and the British Academy. Katie is also an avid choral singer and enjoys frequent collaboration with professional and amateur ensembles alike.

A native of California, Katie spent several years as a full-time music teacher and arts administrator before her life as a musicologist and continues to draw liberally from this foundation in her work in higher education. In addition to Birmingham, she has taught undergraduates and/or postgraduates at the University of Oxford (Magdalen, Lady Margaret Hall, Oriel, Somerville), UCL (MA in Early Modern Exchange), and Royal Holloway, with guest lectures at University of Surrey, Imperial College, and De Paul University.

Supervised by Dr Helen Deeming (RHUL) and Professor Lisa Jardine (UCL), Katie completed her doctoral studies at Royal Holloway, University of London in 2016 and was examined by Regius Professor Julian Johnson and Professor Richard Wistreich. She collaborates regularly with colleagues at the Courtauld Gallery, the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters (UCL), and various choral ensembles around London. 

Teaching

  • Making of the Modern World
  • Group Research (Women and the English Civil War)

Research

My research reflects an interdisciplinary attention to the role of music and visual culture within the intellectual history of early modern England, particularly music's intersection with natural philosophy, the passions, and concepts of sense perception. Recent publications focus on English song, visual and material culture, and the idea of historical experience, revising of the way vernacular recreational music is perceived and taught.

'Musical-Visual Culture in Early Modern England' marks the first dedicated study of depictions of music making in late-Elizabethan, early-Stuart England. It will not only deepen our understanding of early modern emotion but revise narratives about the role of aesthetic experience in seventeenth century intellectual history. For historiographical reasons, art historians and musicologists have yet to analyse together the large body of song and visual culture that explores shared metaphysical topoi, including sensing, dreaming, and love. Focusing on song and musical imagery, my project contributes to our understanding of how visual and auditory sensing built interiority in the home and the self.

Publications

Highlight publications

Bank, K 2023, 'William Byrd’s Come, woeful Orpheus in context: motion as visual and musical affect', Early Music. https://doi.org/10.1093/em/caad054

Bank, K 2023, '“Amphions Harp gaue sence vnto stone Walles”: The Five Senses and Musical–Visual Affect', Arts, vol. 12, no. 5, 219. https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12050219

Bank, K 2020, Knowledge Building in Early Modern English Music. Routledge Studies in Renaissance and Early Modern Worlds of Knowledge, 1 edn, Routledge, New York. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003055891

Recent publications

Article

Bank, K 2020, ''Truth and Travel: The Principal Navigations and ‘Thule, the period of cosmographie'’', Hakluyt Society Journal.

Bank, K 2020, '(Re)creating the Eglantine Table', Early Music. https://doi.org/10.1093/em/caaa051

Bank, K & Thomson, M 2018, 'Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference, Maynooth, 5-8 July 2018', Early Music. https://doi.org/10.1093/EM/CAY075

Bank, K 2016, ''Dialogues of Byrd and Sidney: performing incompleteness'', Renaissance Studies, vol. 31, pp. 407-425. https://doi.org/doi: 10.1111/rest.12224

Chapter (peer-reviewed)

Bank, K 2019, 'Fantastic Spirits': Myth and Satire in the Ayres of Thomas Weelkes. in K Butler & S Bassler (eds), Music, Myth, and Story in Medieval and Early Modern Culture. Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Music, no. 19, Boydell Press, Woodbridge, pp. 207-223.

Book/Film/Article review

Bank, K 2021, 'Linda Phyllis Austern. Both from the Ears and Mind: Thinking about Music in Early Modern England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020. Pp. 384. $55.00 (cloth)', Journal of British Studies, vol. 60, no. 3, pp. 691-693. https://doi.org/10.1017/jbr.2021.21

Editorial

Bank, K & Butler, K 2024, 'Editorial', Early Music. https://doi.org/10.1093/em/caad064

View all publications in research portal