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Faculty & Staff

Areas of Expertise

Professor Smuts' research interests are in the court culture of England (1580-1640), the history of London, (1580-1640), and early Stuart politics and political thought. He teaches courses on Tudor-Stuart England and England in the Age of Revolution, 1660-1850.

Degrees

PhD Princeton University (1976)
BA Yale University (1971)

Professional Publications & Contributions

• Co-edited with Marcello Fantoni and George Gorse, The Politics of Space: European Courts, 1500-1750 (Bulzoni, 2008).
• Court Culture and the Origins of a Royalist Tradition in Early Stuart England (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987; paperback edition 1998).
• Culture and Power in England, 1585-1685 (Macmillan/Palgrave, 1998).
• The Stuart Court and Europe: Essays in Politics and Political Culture (Cambridge University Press, 1996).
• (Edited), Thomas Dekker, Stephen Harrison, Ben Jonson, and Thomas Middleton, The Whole Royal and Magnificent Entertainment of King James through the City of London, 15 March 1604, with the Arches of Triumph in Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino, general editors, Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works (Clarendon Press, 2010), pp. 219-79.
• "Religion, European Politics and Henrietta Maria's Circle," in Erin Griffey, ed., Henrietta Maria: Piety, Politics and Patronage (Ashgate, 2008), pp. 13-38.
• "Banquo's Progeny: Hereditary Monarchy, the Stuart Lineage and Macbeth," in James Dutcher and Ann Lake Prescott, eds., Renaissance Historicisms: Essays in Honor of Arthur F. Kinney (University of Delaware Press, 2008), pp. 225-46.
• "The Court and the Emergence of a Royalist Party," in Jason McElligott and David Smith, eds., Royalists and Royalism during the English Civil War (Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 43-65.
• "Force, Love and Authority in Caroline Political Culture," in Ian Atherton and Julie Sanders, eds., The 1630s: Interdisciplinary Essays on Culture and Politics in the Caroline Era (Manchester University Press, 2006), pp. 50-73.
• "Art and the Material Culture of Majesty in Early Stuart England," in The Stuart Court and Europe, pp. 86-112.

Additional Information

Malcolm Smuts joined the UMB faculty after receiving a Ph.D. from Princeton in 1976. His scholarly interests have centered around the interplay between politics and political culture in England in the late Tudor and Stuart periods. In studying this topic he has sought to combine a traditional historical methodolgy of research in archival sources with a more interdisciplinary analysis of literature and the visual arts. He has long had a special interest in royal courts, reflected in his first book, Court Culture and the Origins of a Royalist Tradition in England; two edited volumes, The Stuart Court and Europe: Essays in Politics and Political Culture and The Politics of Space: European Courts ca. 1500-1750; and his role in two interational organizations: The Society for Court Studies and the Court Studies Forum. In this connection he has played a role in organizing several conferences in locations including Boston, Los Angeles, and London. His current major project involves a study of how the strategic problem of threats of religious violence and instability shaped state formation and political culture in Britain during the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century. In working on this project he has developed an interest in certain facets of Atlantic History, especially in relationship to privateering and cooperation among the Protestant maritime communities of England, France, and the Netherlands. He is also the editor for early modern Britain and Ireland of the electronic journal History Compass.

Professor Smuts' CV