Holly Fletcher

I am a cultural historian of the early modern period with particular interests in the history of the body, material culture and environments in the German and English speaking world.

I'm currently a Research Associate on the Wellcome Trust funded project 'Sleeping Well in the Early Modern World: An Environmental Approach to the History of Sleep Care' at the University of Manchester. This project analyses sleep habits as historically situated environmental practices, uncovering an environmentally informed culture of 'sleep care' in Britain, Ireland and early America c. 1500-1750. Within the project, my research focuses on the material strategies deployed by early modern people to create healthy sleep environments.

Prior to joining Manchester, I taught early modern history at the University of Sussex. I hold a BA, MPhil and PhD from the University of Cambridge. My doctoral research examined the cultural significance of body size in early modern Germany and I am currently revising this work for publication as a monograph. As the first book-length study of body size in early modernity, this project uncovers how ‘fatness’ and ‘thinness’ were understood in this period as well as the role of bodily form in shaping early modern experiences of the world. 

Sleeping Well in the Early Modern World

On the project 'Sleeping Well in the Early Modern World' my research focuses on the material culture of sleep, including the material strategies early modern people used to control their sleeping environments. My first article for the project, which uncovers for the first time the range of animal and plant matter upon which early modern people slept, and the environmental implication of these, has been published open access in Historical Research (2024).

Body Size in Early Modern Germany

My doctoral thesis examined the cultural significance of body size and shape in early modern Germany and I am currently revising this work for publication as a monograph. I have published two articles based on this research in German History in 2021 (winner of the German History Article Prize), and Food & History in 2023. 

This project is the first extended study of body size in early modernity. It explores how contemporaries conceived of ‘fatness’ and ‘thinness’, uncovering both the cultural and material significance of bodily size and shape in the German-speaking regions across the sixteenth century. It relates ideas about body size to shifting ideals for German women’s and men’s bodies in this period, further considering how such fashionable forms were confronted by the actual embodied experiences of early modern protagonists.

By showing that body size mattered in early modern Germany, the project challenges the common view that concern with body size is a modern phenomenon and that if fatness was considered at all in past societies, it was merely understood as a sign of wealth and prosperity. Instead the project demonstrates that such concerns were ever-present in sixteenth-century Germany, becoming embedded in wider discussions regarding religion, gender, selfhood and society.

Conferences

In connection with my research on the religious significance of bodily form, in 2019 I organised an international conference on 'The Reformation of the Body' at the University of Cambridge. This was funded by the Faculty of History and the DAAD. 

Together with Prof. Christine Ott (Frankfurt) and Prof. Jill Burke (Edinburgh) I am the co-organiser of an international conference on 'Fat Bodies in the Early Modern World' which took place in June 2022. The conference was funded by the DFG. See our call for papers here. An edited volume based on the conference contributions entitled 'Fat Bodies in Early Modern Europe' is under contract with Routledge.

Material Culture & Early Modern Bodies

I have long-standing interests in early modern material culture and the history of the body which unite the two projects outlined above. In 2017 I completed my MPhil at the Unviersity of Cambridge for which I examined a range of small statuettes of an naked, elderly woman from 1520s Germany. I used these figures to explore contemporary conceptualisations of the ageing female body in relation to questions of beauty, gender, religion, witchcraft and identity. My article based on this research, 'Age, Gender and the Body in the Bronze and Pearwood Statuettes of 1520s' Germany', was published in Gender & History in 2021.

I am a member of The Bodies, Emotions and Material Culture Collective at Manchester and I run the interview series 'New Directions in the History of the Body' for the Collective's blog.

I am a fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA).

My article, '"Belly-Worshippers and Greed-Paunches": Fatness and the Belly in the Lutheran Reformation' won the 2021 German History Article Prize. This piece also won the runner-up prize in the German History Society's 2019 Postgraduate Essay Competition.

In July 2021 I was awarded a Santorio Fellowship from the CSMBR (Centre for the Study of Medicine and the Body in the Renaissance). 

My PhD research at the University of Cambridge (2017-2020) was funded by a Vice Chancellor's Award from the Cambridge Trust.