Greetings!
This list announces talks in the greater Boston area pertaining to the study of the early modern period ca. 1350-1800, in any discipline and with any regional specialization. This year we are announcing in person and online events and activities relevant to the Boston area. Please forward announcements of events, including exhibits and application deadlines for future conferences in our region. We’re planning a mailing roughly every two weeks—please therefore send notices of events at least two weeks in advance. Please forward announcements, in the format requested at the end of this message, and e-mail addresses to: earlymod@fas.harvard.edu.
For security reasons the list will not disseminate zoom links directly, but we can list an email contact to which to write for further details about attending. Alternatively, we can circulate registration information for events. All times are EDT.
* indicates a newly announced event, ** indicates an updated event
Upcoming Events
*September 18, 2022, 12:00pm - 1:00pm
Exhibition Tour: Dare to Know: Prints and Drawings in the Age of Enlightenment
Join exhibition curator Elizabeth Rudy for an in-depth tour of Dare to Know: Prints and Drawings in the Age of Enlightenment, on view through January 15, 2023.
In-Person, Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy Street, Cambridge MA
Tuesday, 9/20/2022 12:00pm to 1:15pm
Location: on Zoom and in person in Science Center room 252 (SC252), 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge MA, 02138, RSVP: oribenshalom@g.harvard.edu
*Wednesday, September 21, 5:15pm EST
Harvard English Department Renaissance Colloquium
Chris Barrett, Associate Professor of English at Louisiana State Univ., "Spenserian Lepidoptera and Parenthetical Ecologies"
In-person Event
Location: Barker Center, Harvard University, room 211, 12 Quincy St., Cambridge MA, 02138
*September 22, 2022, 12:30pm - 1:00pm
Gallery Talk: Dare to Know: Prints and Drawings in the Age of Enlightenment
Join Margaret Morgan Grasselli for an in-depth discussion about the 18th-century invention of the multicolor, multiplate printing technique that laid the foundation for today’s CMYK process.
In-Person, Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy Street, Cambridge MA
*Thursday, September 22, 6:30–7:45 pm
Where Art and the Life Sciences Meet: Exploring Health Innovation through Dutch Art (Conversation)
Marisa Bass,
professor of the History of Art, Yale University
David S. Jones, A. Bernard Ackerman Professor of the Culture of Medicine, Harvard University
Moderated by Cristela Guerra, arts and culture reporter, WBUR
Museum of Fine Art, Remis Auditorium, 161, 465
Huntington Avenue
Boston, Massachusetts 02115
Members Free, Nonmembers $15
How can Dutch art from the 17th century propel conversations and inspire creative thinking today, especially when it comes to managing the ongoing COVID-19 global health crisis? At this event, copresented by the Center for Netherlandish Art and Netherlands Innovation Network, join a conversation between professors from different disciplines to explore art, health, and disease in society and times of pandemic—then and now—and take a closer look at the pivotal roles the Netherlands and Greater Boston have played in health innovation through the centuries.
*Thursday, September 22, 2022, 4:30pm to 5:30pm
Monday, September 26, 12pm-1pm
Department of the Classics and the Standing Committee on Medieval Studies
Harvard Premodern Race Seminar
Session 2: Reading: Dan-el Padilla Peralta, “Anti-Race” in A Cultural History of Race, Vol. 1, ed. Denise McCoskey (Bloomsbury 2021).
Room 133, Barker Center, 12 Quincy St, Cambridge MA, 02138
For a more detailed description of PRS and its goals, please visit the Canvas site: https://canvas.harvard.edu/courses/81116.
Monday, September 26, 4pm
Harvard Mahindra Humanities Center Seminar on China Humanities
Tian Yuan Tan, University of Oxford: “Writing and Reading ‘Local Court Drama’ in Late Imperial China: Texts, Genres, and Identities”
Yenching Common Room, 2 Divinity Ave. 136, Cambridge MA, 02138
**Tuesday, September 27, 4:30pm
Brown University Medieval and Early Modern History Seminar (MEMHS)
Andrew Romig (NYU Gallatin): “The Wrong Kind of Flattery: Critique and Praise in Walahfrid Strabo’s De imagine Tetrici.”
More information at: https://blogs.brown.edu/memhs/
Please email Maria Sokolova at maria_sokolova@brown.edu to register and for the precirculated paper.
*Wednesday, September 28, 12pm
Center for the Humanities, The University of Rhode Island, RI
Lecture: “The Aroma of Legitimacy in the Late Middle Ages”
Joëlle Rollo-Koster, University of Rhode Island, Department of History
The University of Rhode Island, Hardge Forum, Multicultural Center, Kingston, RI
Both in-person and virtual
RSVP or Registration information/link:
https://web.uri.edu/humanities/the-aroma-of-legitimacy-in-the-late-middle-ages/
*September 30, 2022, 12:30pm - 1:00pm
Gallery Talk: Dare to Know: Prints and Drawings in the Age of Enlightenment
Join Sam Nehila, curatorial assistant in the Division of European and American Art, for an in-depth discussion about William Hogarth’s print series The Four Stages of Cruelty, on view in the special exhibition Dare to Know: Prints and Drawings in the Age of Enlightenment.
In-Person, Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy Street, Cambridge MA
*October 2, 2022, 12:00pm - 1:00pm
Exhibition Tour: Dare to Know: Prints and Drawings in the Age of Enlightenment
Join exhibition curator Elizabeth Rudy for an in-depth tour of Dare to Know: Prints and Drawings in the Age of Enlightenment, on view through January 15, 2023. She will share insights about how works on paper played a critical role in the 18th century.
In-Person, Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy Street, Cambridge MA
*Sunday, October 2, 3-4 pm
Jeffrey R. Wilson (Harvard University): Book Launch for Richard III’s Bodies from Medieval England to Modernity: Shakespeare and Disability History
Location: lala books (189 Market St. Lowell, MA 01852)
free, kids welcome, drinks and snacks
Mon Oct 3, 4:30pm
Sponsored by the Mahindra Humanities Center seminar on Book History
Shamil Jeppie (University of Cape Town): "Book Collecting in Timbuktu."
In person event; Barker Center 133, 12 Quincy St., Cambridge MA.
This lecture surveys five centuries of collecting in Timbuktu, a town in the interior of West Africa, that has come to symbolize a larger world of learning and book culture in the region. This lecture follows citations in texts written in the town in the 16th century, book borrowing and copying, through to a major collector of the early 20th century who both attempted to conserve the manuscript book tradition and imported printed books to Timbuktu.
Monday, October 3, 2022, 5:30-6:30, with reception to follow
Boston College's Art, Art History and Film Department and the McMullen Museum of Art
Lecture: “Thinking through the Objects: Displaying the Italian Renaissance at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston”
Marietta Cambareri, Senior Curator of European Sculpture and Jetskalina H. Phillips Curator of Judaica, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
In-person: The McMullen Museum of Art, 2101 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 111, Brighton MA; directions and parking
Tuesday, 10/4/2022 12:00pm to 1:15pm
Location: On Zoom and in person in Science Center room 252 (SC252), 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge MA, 02138. RSVP: oribenshalom@g.harvard.edu
Thursday, Oct 6, 2022, 4pm
Brown University Early Modern World Event
Cécile Fromont (History of Art, Yale University): Title TBA
Location TBD
Cécile Fromont’s writing and teaching focus on the visual, material, and religious culture of Africa and Latin America with a special emphasis on the early modern period (ca 1500-1800) and on the Portuguese-speaking Atlantic World. More information about her talk is coming soon at https://events.brown.edu/early-modern-world/event/236722-early-modern-lecture-cecile-fromont-yale
*October 9, 2022, 10:00am - 1:00pm
Materials Lab Workshop: Modeling Material Culture in Paper
This workshop is inspired by the exhibition Dare to Know: Prints and Drawings in the Age of Enlightenment, which explores how the graphic arts inspired, shaped, and gave immediacy to new ideas in the so-called age of reason.
In-Person, Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy Street, Cambridge MA
Thursday, 10/6/2022 4:30pm
Location: Harvard Faculty Club, 20 Quincy St., Cambridge, MA 02138
*Thursday, October 6, 2022, 6:00pm
Harvard MHC Seminar on Eighteenth Century Studies
The Non-Pursuit of Happiness: Childhood, Slavery, and Fugitivity in the Age of Revolution
Annette Joseph-Gabriel, Duke University
Location: Online
Please add your name and email address to this registration page. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with a link and passcode to the event.
If you have any questions about the event, please contact Sue Lanser at lanser@brandeis.edu
Wednesday, October 12, 4:30pm-6:15pm
Wesleyan University Renaissance Seminar
Miles P. Grier, Queens College of the City University of New York: "Rac'd All Over their Bodies": Clothing, Tattoo, and Stigma in Early Modern English Racecraft
Boger Hall 113, 41 Wyllys Ave., Middletown, CT 06459
For more information or to RSVP (required), please email mtokumitsu@wesleyan.edu
Saturday, Oct 15, 2022
New England Renaissance Conference (NERC)
Theme: “Instruments of Power in the Global Early Modern.”
Amherst College, Amherst MA
Registration by September 23, 2022
Monday, October 17, 12pm-1pm
Department of the Classics and the Standing Committee on Medieval Studies
Harvard Premodern Race Seminar
Session 3: Reading: selections from Sarah Derbew, Untangling Blackness in Greek Antiquity (Cambridge 2022).
Room 133, Barker Center, 12 Quincy St, Cambridge MA, 02138
For a more detailed description of PRS and its goals, please visit the Canvas site: https://canvas.harvard.edu/courses/81116.
Tuesday, 10/18/2022, 12:00pm to 1:15pm
Location: On Zoom and in person in Science Center room 252 (SC252), 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge MA, 02138, RSVP:oribenshalom@g.harvard.edu
October 20–21, 2022
The Clark Art Institute. Clark Conference
Beyond Boundaries: Seeing Art History from the Caribbean
Convened by Anna Arabindan-Kesson (Princeton University) and Wayne Modest (National Museum of Worldcultures and Wereldmuseum )
225 South Street, Williamstown, MA 01267
Website: https://www.clarkart.edu/research-academic/rap-events/clark-conference-2022
Friday, Oct 21, 2022, 5:30pm
Harvard Mahindra Humanities Center Seminar on Shakespearean Studies
Kristen Bennett, Framingham State University: “Cosmographical Contemplation in Shakespeare’s Theatrum Mundi”
Room 133, Barker Center, 12 Quincy St., Cambridge MA, 02138
Monday, October 24, 12pm-1pm
Department of the Classics and the Standing Committee on Medieval Studies
Harvard Premodern Race Seminar
Session 4: Reading: draft of article in progress by Anna Wilson, “Racial Innocence: Whiteness and Childhood in Chaucer’s ‘Prioress’ Tale’”.
Room 133, Barker Center, 12 Quincy St, Cambridge MA, 02138
For a more detailed description of PRS and its goals, please visit the Canvas site: https://canvas.harvard.edu/courses/81116.
Monday, October 24, 5:30pm
Harvard Mahindra Humanities Seminar on Medieval Studies
Alfred Thomas, University of Illinois Chicago: Book Discussion of his Writing Plague: Language and Violence from the Black death to COVID-19 with Hannah Marcus, John and Ruth Hazel Associate Professor of the Social Sciences
110 Barker Center, 12 Quincy St., Cambridge MA, 02138
Monday, 10/24/2022 6:00pm
Sponsored by the Early Modern Workshop and Scandinavian Studies, Harvard
Location: In person event: History Dept conference room (formerly the Lower Library) on the ground/first floor, Robinson Hall, Harvard Yard
*Thursday, October 27, 2022, 6:00pm
Harvard MHC Seminar on Eighteenth Century Studies
Historicizing Eighteenth-Century Palestine
Zoe Beenstock, University of Haifa
Barker Center, Harvard University, Room 133, 12 Quincy St., Cambridge MA, 02138
*Oct 28, 2022, 4:30pm – 6:30pm
The Arthur F. Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies
Evan MacCarthy (University of Massachusetts Amherst), “Orchestrating Shakespeare's Storms". 6th Annual Normand Berlin Memorial Lecture
650 East Pleasant Street, Amherst, MA, 01002
Evan MacCarthy is a Five College Visiting Assistant Professor of Music History in the Department of Music & Dance at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His research focuses on the history of fifteenth-century music and music theory, late medieval chant, German music in the Baroque era, as well as nineteenth-century American music. His book Ruled by the Muses: Italian Humanists and their Study of Music in the Fifteenth Century explores the musical lives of scholars who sought to revive the cultural and intellectual traditions of ancient Greece and Rome. More information: https://www.umass.edu/renaissance/event/berlinmaccarthy2022
Tuesday, 11/1/2022 12:00pm to 1:15pm
Location: On Zoom and in person in Science Center room 252 (SC252), 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge MA, 02138, RSVP:oribenshalom@g.harvard.edu
Friday, Nov 4, 2022, 5:30pm
Harvard Mahindra Humanities Seminar on Shakespearean Studies
Coppelia Kahn, Brown University: “Reading Faces in Hamlet”
133, Barker Center, 12 Quincy St., Cambridge MA 02138
Monday, November 7, 12pm-1pm
Department of the Classics and the Standing Committee on Medieval Studies
Harvard Premodern Race Seminar
Session 5: Reading: TBD, on topic of slavery in the ancient/medieval Mediterranean OR pedagogy session, “Teaching Difficult Issues With Cases,” with Dan Smail.
Room 133, Barker Center, 12 Quincy St, Cambridge MA, 02138
For a more detailed description of PRS and its goals, please visit the Canvas site: https://canvas.harvard.edu/courses/81116.
Tuesday, 11/15/2022 12:00pm to 1:15pm
Location: On Zoom and in person in Science Center room 252 (SC252), 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge MA, 02138, RSVP oribenshalom@g.harvard.edu
Wednesday, November 16, 5:30 pm
Brown University, Center for the Study of the Early Modern World
Ricardo Padrón, University of Virginia: “The Chinese Discovery of America? Franciscan Missionaries and Mexican Material Culture in Guangzhou, 1579.”
Pembroke Hall 305, Brown University, Providence, RI
In 1579, a group of Franciscan friars under the leadership of one Fray Pedro Alfaro attempted to establish a mission in China. Taken into custody by the Ming authorities, their destiny was shaped by the work of both human and non-human mediators, specifically a Chinese interpreter and a series of objects that the friars had brought with them from New Spain. As far as we know, this incident represents the first encounter between Chinese literati and the material culture of colonial Spanish America. The encounter provides an opportunity to reflect on patterns of early modern globalization facilitated by trans-Pacific travel.
More information: https://events.brown.edu/early-modern-world/event/236965-early-modern-lecture-ricardo-padron-university-of
Monday, November 21, 12pm-1pm
Department of the Classics and the Standing Committee on Medieval Studies
Harvard Premodern Race Seminar
Session 6: Reading: Shokoofeh Rajabzadeh, “The Depoliticized Saracen and Muslim Erasure,” Literature Compass (2019).
Room 133, Barker Center, 12 Quincy St, Cambridge MA, 02138
For a more detailed description of PRS and its goals, please visit the Canvas site: https://canvas.harvard.edu/courses/81116.
*Thursday, December 1, 2022, 5:00pm-7:00pm
Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies
Five College Seminar in Book History with Joyce Chaplin (Harvard University)
This talk will be held via Zoom. Register here.
More information: https://www.umass.edu/renaissance/event/bookhistchaplin2022
*Thursday, December 1, 2022, 6:00pm
Harvard MHC Seminar on Eighteenth Century Studies
New Eyes on the Eighteenth Century: XIII Dinner Symposium
Barker Center, Harvard University, Room 133, 12 Quincy St., Cambridge MA, 02138
Tuesday, 12/6/2022 12:00pm to 1:15pm
Ashley Gonik (History, Harvard), “Approaching Error in Early Modern Printed Tables” (ESWG, Harvard)
Location: On Zoom and in person in Science Center room 252 (SC252), 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge MA, 02138, RSVP: oribenshalom@g.harvard.edu
***
*If you would like your announcement to be posted in an upcoming Early Mod Events listing please send your event details to: earlymod@fas.harvard.edu
To be included in the Early Mod Events mailing, the event must take place or (in case of online events) be relevant to the greater Boston area. Announcements are posted at the discretion of the Early Mod Listserv administrator. It would be a great help if you could follow this format:
Day, date, time
Sponsor (if available)
Type of event (ex. Lecture/Symposium/Workshop), Event Title
Person giving talk (in bold), their home institution (if applicable)
Location: in-person or virtual
*If the event is virtual, please include either a Zoom registration link OR a contact email with the announcement. If your event is being held in-person, please specify this, and include location details.
Additional info (no more than a couple of sentences)
RSVP or Registration information/link