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. 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, 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 Boston/Eastern times.
CFP for Local Conferences
CFP: Abstract deadlines and keynote TBA.
Undergraduate Shakespeare Conference: "Shakespeare & Play", April 27, 2024 at Clark University, 950 Main St, Worcester, MA.
We announce the return of the in-person academic conference for undergraduate students from Greater Boston, Central Mass, and New England more broadly.
Please email ClarkShaxConference2024@gmail.com for more info
Upcoming Fortnight: Events
October 17, 3:00pm to 5:00pm
Harvard History of Philosophy Workshop
Jean-Pascal Anfray (École Normale Supérieure), “Essences in the Descartes-Gassendi Controversy”
Location: Robbins Library, Emerson Hall 211, Harvard University
October 17, 2023, 4:30pm
MEMHS Brown University Medieval & Early Modern History Seminar
Tiraana Bains (Assistant Professor, History Department, Brown University), discussion of her chapter, “Company, Parliament, and Mughal: Constituting Imperial Governance.” This is part of her book manuscript, Instituting Empire: The Making of a British Imperial State in South Asia, 1750-1800.
Location: Pavilion Room, Brown History Department, Peter Green House, Providence RI
https://www.brownmemhs.com/ (New website)
More information and precirculated paper: maria_sokolova@brown.edu
October 18, 5pm EST
Harvard English Department Renaissance Colloquium
Graduate Student Presentation: Caroline Engelmayer, graduate student in English, "'Forsake me not thus': Ovid's Heroides and Milton's Psychology of Alienation"
Graduate Student Presentation and Workshop on the pre-circulated paper
Location: Barker Center 211
https://sites.google.com/g.harvard.edu/harvard-eng-grad-colloquium/renaissance-colloquium
Wednesday, October 18, 2023, 6pm
Mahindra Humanities Center Seminar on Women, Gender, and Culture in the Early Modern World
Roundtable: “Charting a Future for Early Modern Gender Studies in a Time of Shrinking Humanities Departments.”
Discussants:
Location: Online (Registration)
Thursday, October 19, 2023, 4:30pm
Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures, Harvard
Jerry Hunter, Bangor University (Wales): Informal Introduction to Early Modern Welsh Literature (open for all)
(Further dates on Oct 26; Nov 16, 30).
Kates Room, Room 201, Warren House, Harvard Yard
No RSVP required.
Friday, October 20, 2023, 12-1:15pm
Sponsor: Harvard Mahindra Humanities Center Seminar on Civilizations of Ancient Greece and Rome
Erika Valdivieso, Yale Department of Classics: "Searching for Dido” (Lecture)
Plimpton Room, Barker Center, Room 133, Harvard University, 12 Quincy St., Cambridge MA
More Information: https://mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu/event/erika-valdivieso-tba
Friday, October 20, 2023, 2:30pm - 7:30pm EDT
Center for the Study of the Early Modern World, Brown University
Early Modern World Colloquium: European Colonialism in the Americas: Consequences and Contemporary Responses
Confirmed speakers are: Prof. Gustavo Verdesio (University of Michigan) and Prof. Kimberly Borchard (Randolph-Macon College)
Rhode Island Hall, Room 108, Brown University
Center for the Study of the Early Modern World
Tuesday, October 24, 2023, 12:00pm to 1:15pm
Harvard Early Sciences Working Group
Sherah Bloor (Committee on the Study of Religion), “Anatomy of the Soul: Swedenborg and Kant on the Mechanics of the Internal Senses”
Hybrid format: In-person at Science Center room 252 (SC252), Harvard University, 1 Oxford St, Cambridge MA, 02138 and on Zoom
Email: brianabrightly@g.harvard.edu or analuiza_nicolae@g.harvard.edu
Thursday, October 26, 2023, 12:00pm EST
Mahindra Humanities Center Renaissance Studies Seminar
Lecture
Facétie et Thérapie dans les Essais de Montaigne
Speaker: Dominique Bertrand, Université Clermont Auvergne
Location: virtual
Registration link: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYkdO6qrzItEtx3Y7IvRpJoKGvu0UxO2l5c
Thursday, October 26, 2023, 4:30pm
Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures, Harvard
Jerry Hunter, Bangor University (Wales): Informal Introduction to Early Modern Welsh Literature (open for all)
(Further dates on Nov 16, 30).
Kates Room, Room 201, Warren House, Harvard Yard
No RSVP required.
*Friday, October 27, 3:00pm to 5:00pm
Harvard History of Philosophy Workshop
Eric Watkins (UCSD),"Kant’s Criticism of Metaphysics"
Location: Robbins Library, Emerson Hall 211, Harvard University
*Friday, October 27, 2022, 5pm
2023 Normand Berlin Lecture
Debapriya Sarkar, Assistant Professor of English and Maritime Studies at the University of Connecticut: Figuring Race in Early Modern Drama
Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies, 650 East Pleasant Street, Amherst, MA 01002
This event will be held in person at the Kinney Center and is part of the 2023-2024 Shakespeare Unbound exhibit.
Events later in the Semester:
*Monday, October 30, 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
The Bollandists: Historians of the Impossible
A lecture by Prof. Carlos Eire, Department of History, Yale University
Location: Simboli Hall (Brighton Campus of Boston College/School of Theology and Ministry), Room 100. (In person)
Map:
https://www.bc.edu/bc-web/about/maps-and-directions/brighton-campus-map.html
Founded in 1607, The Bollandists are a group of scholars (often Jesuits) who have applied their intellectual rigor to the study of the saints in a systematic, in-depth, scrupulous, disinterested research and are considered the pioneers of documenting the impossible in the lives of saints. A member of the Boilandist Collegium will be present.
About the Presenter: Professor Carlos Eire is the T. Lawrason Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale University. He is the author of A Very Brief History of Eternity, Reformations: The Early Modern World, The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila: A Biography, and They Flew: A History of the Impossible.
*October 30, 2023, 7:00pm
Meghan Constantinou: "Stenciled Books as a Domestic Printing Art in 18th-Century France" (Lecture)
Location: Katherine Small Gallery, 108 Beacon Street, Somerville, Massachusetts 02143
Meghan Constantinou will talk about stenciled books—in which all (or most) of the textual and decorative elements are hand-stenciled—in the context of eighteenth-century French domestic printing.
*10/31/2023 7:30pm
Sebouh David Aslanian, Professor and Richard Hovannisian Endowed Chair in Modern Armenian History at the University of California, Los Angeles: "Early Modernity and Mobility: Port Cities and Printers Across the Armenian Diaspora, 1512-1800"
Location: In-person at the Naasr Vartan Gregorian Building, 395 Concord Ave., Belmont, MA. Also Live on Zoom (Registration required) and on Youtube
November 1st, 5pm EST
Harvard English Department Renaissance Colloquium
Jessica Beckman, Assistant Professor of English at Dartmouth, "Reading the Room: Spenser and the Space of the Text"
Location: Barker Center 211
https://sites.google.com/g.harvard.edu/harvard-eng-grad-colloquium/renaissance-colloquium
*November 3, 2023, all day
Harvard History of Science
Workshop: "Creating an Ordered World in Disordered Times: The Pope Orrery"
Location: Harvard Science Center • Room 469 • 1 Oxford Street • Cambridge, MA
This public workshop will gather specialists—historians of science, furniture, labor, and politics, as well as horologists, and conservators—around the Pope Orrery (built 1776-1787 in Boston) to interpret it from their diverse vantage points. Together we will use the Pope Orrery as a mise-en-scène for an examination of Boston and the British world during the American Revolution, as witnessed by the labor, technology, economics, and politics of its production and sale, the social classes involved, and its use as a spectacle, prestige item, and model for teaching natural philosophy and religion. The program and list of speakers can be found here.
Tuesday, November 7, 2023, 12:00pm to 1:15pm
Harvard Early Sciences Working Group
Hannah Kaemmer (Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Planning, Harvard), “Engineers as Imperial Agents in 17th-Century England”
The meeting will be held in hybrid format, both on Zoom and in person in Science Center room 252 (SC252). Email: brianabrightly@g.harvard.edu or analuiza_nicolae@g.harvard.edu
Tuesday, November 7, 6pm
Harvard Mahindra Humanities Center Seminar on Eighteenth-Century Studies
Tara Menon, Harvard: Talking like a Heroine: The Case of Mansfield Park’s Fanny Price
Barker Center, Room 133, 12 Quincy St., Cambridge MA
Tuesday, November 14, 2023, 5:00pm
Sponsored by the Asia Center and the Early Modern Workshop in the Department of History, Harvard
Book launch and discussion featuring Joshua Ehrlich (University of Macau), author of The East India Company and the Politics of Knowledge (CUP 2023) in conversation with Alex Csiszar (History of Science, Harvard) and Rishad Choudhury (Oberlin College)
Belfer Case Study Room, CGIS S020, 1730 Cambridge St, Cambridge MA
This is a hybrid event; please register here for the zoomlink:
https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_qa_rmn8RRCqw5j6dSoUoKA
Wednesday, November 15, 5pm EST
Harvard English Department Renaissance Colloquium
Catherine Nicholson, Professor of English at Yale, "Reforming the Alphabet: The Renaissance Before Reading"
Location: Barker Center 211
https://sites.google.com/g.harvard.edu/harvard-eng-grad-colloquium/renaissance-colloquium
Wednesday, November 15, 2023, 6pm
Sponsor: Mahindra Humanities Center on American Literature and Culture
Christy Pottroff, Boston College, and Donald Slater, Phillips Academy Andover: „Finding Anne Bradstreet: An Archaeological Study of the Poet’s North Andover Homes“
Respondent: Elizabeth Maddock Dillon, Northeastern University
Location: Harvard Barker Center, Room 133, 12 Quincy St., Cambridge MA
More Information: https://mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu/event/christy-pottroff-tba
Thursday, November 16, 2023, 4:30pm
Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures, Harvard
Jerry Hunter, Bangor University (Wales): Informal Introduction to Early Modern Welsh Literature (open for all)
(Further date on November 30).
Kates Room, Room 201, Warren House, Harvard Yard
No RSVP required.
Thursday, November 16, 2023, 5:30pm
Brown University History Department
44th William Church Memorial Lecture: Jennifer Morgan (NYU): “On Race and Reinscription: Writing Enslaved Women into the Early Modern Archive”
Location: Smith-Buonanno Hall, Room 106, Brown University Campus, Providence, RI 02912
Brown University Center for the Study of the Early Modern World and MEMHS Brown University Medieval & Early Modern History Seminar
In this talk, Jennifer L. Morgan uses the history of three black women from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to explore questions of methodology and archives in the early history of the Black Atlantic. Through evidence from visual art, law, and commerce, Morgan considers the challenges and possibilities of crafting a social-historical study of women whose voices are so often absent from the archival record, but whose lives and perspectives have proven to be essential for comprehending the origins of racial capitalism.
Friday, November 17, 2023, 5:30pm
Harvard Mahindra Humanities Center Seminar on Shakespearean Studies
Yu Jin Ko, Professor of English, Wellesley College: Consent and Animation in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The Korean Madang as a New Green World
Harvard University, Barker Center, Room 133, 12 Quincy St, Cambridge MA
See also: Shakespearean Studies
Tuesday, November 28, 2023, 2:30pm
Harvard Mahindra Humanities Center Seminars on Cartography and Renaissance Studies
Workshop: Chet Van Duzer, University of Rochester: “Looking Slowly at Early Modern Maps”
Location: Lamont Library, Harvard Yard, Forum Room
Chet Van Duzer will discuss several early modern maps to demonstrate the value of applying patient contemplation to cartography, provide ideas about the types of conclusions that can be reached through slow looking, and show the richness of early maps as objects for study. More Information
Tuesday, November 28, 2023, 3:00pm
Harvard Early Sciences Working Group and Philosophy Department
Gideon Manning (Associate Professor of History of Medicine and Humanities at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and Director of the Cedars-Sinai Program in the History of Medicine): “Descartes, Images, and the Iconography of Actions"
Robbins Library, Emerson Hall 211, Harvard Yard
Email:brianabrightly@g.harvard.edu or analuiza_nicolae@g.harvard.edu
Tuesday, November 28 (Due to the Thanksgiving Break, MEMHS is moved forward to November 28), 4:30 PM
MEMHS Brown University Medieval & Early Modern History Seminar
Gershon D. Hundert (Leanor Segal Professor of Jewish Studies, McGill University. (This is a joint event, MEMHS & Judaic Studies, Brown University).
Location: Pavilion Room at the Brown History Department, Providence RI
https://www.brownmemhs.com/upcoming-events
Wednesday, November 29, 2023, 5pm
Mahindra Humanities Center Seminar in History of the Book
Molly Hardy (Independent scholar), “Plant Machines: Information Ecologies from Carl Linnaeus to Asa Gray,” followed by a comment by Whitney Barlow Robles (Visiting Scholar, Dartmouth).
Barker Center 133, 12 Quincy St, Cambridge MA
Thursday, November 30, 2023, 4:30pm
Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures, Harvard
Jerry Hunter, Bangor University (Wales): Informal Introduction to Early Modern Welsh Literature (open for all)
Kates Room, Room 201, Warren House, Harvard Yard
No RSVP required.
Thursday, November 30, 5pm EST
Harvard English Department Renaissance Colloquium
James Simpson, the Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor Emeritus of English at Harvard, "Modernity's Selfhood and the Desacralization of Images; or, Being an Early Modern Image Hurts"
Professor Simpson will speak to a joint Medieval-Renaissance Colloquia audience.
Location: TBA
https://sites.google.com/g.harvard.edu/harvard-eng-grad-colloquium/renaissance-colloquium
Thursday, November 30, 6pm
Harvard Mahindra Humanities Center Seminar on Women, Gender, and Culture in the Early Modern World
Stephen Spiess (Department of English, Babson College): “Confounding Intersections: Gender, Sexuality, and the Politics of Glossing in Pericles and Edward II”
The Barker Center, Room 133, Harvard University, 12 Quincy St, Cambridge, MA
**Monday, December 4, 2023 6:00pm
Robert Darnton, Harvard: Talk on his forthcoming book, The Revolutionary Temper, Paris 1748-1789
Location: Boston Athenaeum, 10½ Beacon Street, Boston, MA 02108
Tuesday, December 5, 2023, 12:00pm to 1:15pm
Harvard Early Sciences Working Group
Ori Ben-Shalom (History of Science, Harvard), “With Armed Eyes: Plague, the Perplexities of the Microscope, and the Struggle over History”
Location:
Hybrid format: In-person at Science Center room 252 (SC252), Harvard University, 1 Oxford St, Cambridge MA, 02138 and on Zoom (see event details)
The meeting will be held in hybrid format, both on Zoom and in person in Science Center room 252 (SC252). Email: brianabrightly@g.harvard.edu or analuiza_nicolae@g.harvard.edu
December 6, 2023, 12:00-1:15pm
Tufts Center for the Humanities
Diego Javier Luis, Department of History, Department of Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora, Tufts University: “Devouring the Pacific: How the Repartimientos Made Acapulco an Afro-Mexican Port”
Location TBA
December 6, 3pm EST
Harvard English Department Renaissance Colloquium
MFA Visit: "Strong Women in Renaissance Italy"
Please join us for a visit to and self-guided group tour of the MFA's Special Exhibition, "Strong Women in Renaissance Italy." More info on the exhibition can be found here.
Location: Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave, Boston
https://sites.google.com/g.harvard.edu/harvard-eng-grad-colloquium/renaissance-colloquium
December 6, 5:30pm EST
Center for the Study of the Early Modern World, Brown University
Early Modern World Lecture: Ben Leeming (Rivers High School, Boston)
Location: TBD
More information will be coming soon.
Center for the Study of the Early Modern World
Wednesday, December 13, 2023, 6pm
Robert Darnton, Harvard: Talk on his forthcoming book, The Revolutionary Temper, Paris 1748-1789, in conversation with Ann Blair, Harvard
Location: French Library, 53 Marlborough St., Boston, MA 02116
***
*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