Claire Elaine Jowitt is an English academic who writes on race, cross-gender, piracy, identity, empire and performance.
[2] Her work on the representation of outsiders such as Jews,[3] Turks[4] and pirates[5] in Renaissance literature and culture has cast light on the complex and contradictory nature of contemporary attitudes to "others".
Her examination of two early modern English "Turk" plays, Lust's Dominion and The Turke, notes the insight they provide to the domestic concerns of the culture they were produced within, including their negative depiction of Islamic men and their contribution to contemporary anti-Muslim sentiment.
She suggests that the depiction of pirates in Sir Philip Sydney's New Arcadia — in some respects acting little differently from any group of fighting men — may reflect the ambivalence of English attitudes of the time towards "men of action" like Sir Francis Drake.
[6] In May 2008, a major interdisciplinary conference entitled Richard Hakluyt 1552–1616: Life, Times, Legacy was convened by Jowitt and several colleagues, jointly organised by the National Maritime Museum, the Centre for Travel Writing Studies, Nottingham Trent University and the National University of Ireland, Galway.