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.
Below, please find the latest news on travel related changes below. Please forward
announcements, in the format requested at the end of this message, and e-mail addresses
to: earlymod(a)fas.harvard.edu.
This Week’s Events
*Thursday, March 5th, 4:30 pm
Amherst College French Department Biennial Lecture in Honor of Professor Jay Caplan
"The Histoire mémorable between News & History: Framing Accounts of Current
Events in the French Wars of Religion"
Andrea M. Frisch, University of Maryland College Park
Alumni House Reception Center, 75 Churchill Street, Amherst College, Amherst, MA 01002
This talk will address the ways in which current or very recent events were packaged
generically in the turbulent context of the French Wars of Religion. It will examine the
histoire mémorable as the terrain upon which personal, polemical, pamphlet-style accounts
could make a bid for entry into the long-term, capital-H historical record.
Thursday, March 5, 5:15 pm
Harvard English Department Renaissance Colloquium
"Westworld and The Tempest: The Return of the Dead"
Christina Wald (University of Konstanz)
Barker 114, 12 Quincy St., Cambridge
https://sites.google.com/harvard.edu/english-graduate-colloquia/renaissance…
Friday, March 6, 2020 - 5:30pm
Mahindra Humanities Center Harvard Seminar on Shakespearean Studies
“Sexual Ethics and Negation in Shakespeare's Private Theater Plays.”
Meghan Andrews, Lycoming College
Room 133, Barker Center, 12 Quincy St., Cambridge
http://mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu/content/shakespearean-studies
*Friday, March 6, 2020, 4pm
Annual Normand Berlin Memorial Lecture
"The Sibyl's Fire: Women and Textual Destruction in Early Modern England"
Sarah Wall-Randell, Wellesley College
The Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies, 650 East Pleasant Street,
Amherst, MA
The lecture explores the noted phenomenon of women destroying texts or disrupting their
transmission. From the Sibyl burning the books of prophecies to Amy burning Jo's
manuscript in Little Women, this talk investigates early modern accounts of the
destruction or loss of books and the references to sibyls that accompany them. Reception
to follow.
Monday, March 9, 2020, 6-7pm
Massachusetts Historical Society
“Inventing Boston: Design Production, & Consumption, 1680-1720”
Edward S. Cooke, Jr., Yale University
Massachusetts Historical Society, 1154 Boylston Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02215
Please register on their event site at
https://www.masshist.org/calendar
Tuesday, March 10, 2020, 5:15pm
Massachusetts Historical Society
Pauline Maier Early American History Seminar “The Metabolism of Military Forces in the War
of Independence: Environmental Contexts and Consequences”
David Hsiung, Juniata College; Comment: James Rice, Tufts University
Massachusetts Historical Society, 1154 Boylston Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02215
Please register on their event site at
https://www.masshist.org/calendar
NEW DATE: March 10, 2020, 5:30 PM
Brown University Medieval & Early Modern History Seminar
The 40th William F. Church Memorial Lecture
“False Impressions: A History of Print Forgery”
Nick Wilding (Georgia State University)
Smith-Buonanno Hall, 106, Brown University, Providence, RI
https://blogs.brown.edu/memhs/
Prof. Nick Wilding is a historian of early modern Italy, of the book, and of science. A
recipient of many awards and fellowships, and author of many works, most notably Galileo’s
Idol: Gianfrancesco Sagredo and the Politics of Knowledge (2014), he also became visible
internationally when in 2012 he exposed a grand fraud. Wilding proved that a proffered
copy of Galileo’s famous treatise on the use of a telescope to observe the stars, Sidereus
Nuncius (1610), purportedly including Galileo’s own watercolors of the moon, was a clever
forgery. It helped to bring the director of the Girolamini Library in Naples, Marino
Massimo De Caro – part of the Berlusconi network – to justice. (De Caro was also found to
have embezzled many hundreds of books from the library he oversaw.) Wilding also featured
prominently in the PBS documentary about how the fraud was exposed, “Galileo’s Moon”
(which premiered on July 2, 2019).
Free and open to the public. A reception will follow the lecture.
Tuesday, March 10, 7pm
American Antiquarian Society, Worcester
Book Talk: “First Martyr of Liberty: Crispus Attucks in American Memory”
Mitch Kachun, Western Michigan University
In collaboration with the exhibition “Beyond Midnight: Paul Revere”
185 Salisbury Street, Worcester, MA
https://www.americanantiquarian.org/public-program-mitch-kachun
*Wednesday, March 11, 2020, 12-1pm
The 2020 Erasmus Lectures on the History and Civilization of the Netherlands and Flanders,
Harvard
Part II: A Burgherly Life on the Banda Islands: Land, Labor and Ecology in the 1621
Genocide
Pepijn Brandon (VU Amsterdam)
History Department Conference Room, Robinson Hall 125, 35 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA
02138
(A light lunch will be served.)
In 1621, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) under the leadership of its Governor General
Jan Pieterszoon Coen conquered the Banda Islands, securing the highly coveted
nutmeg-monopoly for the Company. In the process, Coen’s soldiers killed, expelled or
enslaved almost all of the islands’ 15,000 inhabitants. Often treated as an excess driven
by the individual character of Coen as a military leader, this lecture will show how a
decade of debates over the best ways to control land, labor and ecology prepared the
ground for genocide. It will thus continue the lecture series’ theme of the relationship
between the Dutch Republic’s highly urbanized commercial capitalism and the global
countryside.
**POSTPONED: Wednesday, March 11, 2020 - 5:30pm
Early Modern Annual Lecture
“Writing History in the Sixteenth Century: Remarking the Boundaries of a Discipline in the
New Spain”
Serge Gruzinski, École de Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris
Smith-Buonanno Hall, 106, Brown University, Providence, RI
https://events.brown.edu/early-modern-world/view/event/event_id/146505
Unfortunately Serge Gruzinski’s visit to Brown next week and his lecture on March 11 will
not take place. The postponement is a consequence of the substantial risks and practical
difficulties arising from the spread of the corona virus (COVID 19) in France and
internationally. They expect to reschedule these planned activities for later in 2020 and
details of arrangements will be circulated in due course.
Wednesday, March 11, 2020 - 6:00pm
Mahindra Humanities Center Harvard Seminar on Native Cultures of the Americas,
Co-sponsored with MHC Seminar on Eighteenth-Century Studies
Before “The Raven”
Sarah Rivett, Princeton University
Room 133, Barker Center, 12 Quincy St., Cambridge
http://mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu/content/native-cultures-americas
Upcoming Events
Thursday, March 12, 2020, 6pm
Harvard English Department Renaissance Colloquium
"The Virgilianism of Shakespeare's History Plays"
John Gardner (St. Andrew’s)
Room 269, Barker Center, 12 Quincy St., Cambridge
Thursday, March 19, 2020, 1-5pm
Harvard Art Museums
Symposium: The Feinberg Collection: Six Works
Menschel Hall, Lower Level, Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge MA. Please enter
the museums via the entrance on Broadway. Seating will begin at 12:30pm. Free admission,
but seating is limited. Complimentary parking available in the Broadway Garage, 7 Felton
Street, Cambridge.
Program and further information:
https://www.harvardartmuseums.org/calendar/the-feinberg-collection-six-works
The symposium coincides with the exhibition “Painting Edo: Japanese Art from the Feinberg
Collection,” on view at the Harvard Art Museums from February 14 through July 26, 2020.
*Saturday, March 21, 2020, 8:30-4pm
Connecticut Freemasons
The 2020 Grand Historians' Symposium: Explore the Origins of Freemasonry...with the
Advantages of 20/20 Hindsight!
Keynote (10:05am): Margaret C. Jacob (UCLA): Freemasonry Seen Historically--Evolution from
the 1650's to 1800.
Location: Scottish Rite Masonic Museum and Library, 33 Marrett Road, Lexington, MA 02421
The symposium is open to the public, but tickets are limited to afford ample interaction
with Dr. Jacob and the presenters. Details can be found on the Facebook page: Connecticut
Freemasons. For more information please contact the Grand Master Melvin E. Johnson
mjohnson (at)
ctfreemasons.net
Saturday, March 21, 2020, 3-4:45 pm
Association for Asian Studies 2020 Annual Conference, March 19-22, 2020
Session: Publish or Perish: New Perspectives on Book Cultures in East Asia
Hwisang Cho (Emory University): "Texts in Disarray: Manuscript Books in Chosŏn
Scholarly Culture;" Motoi Katsumata (Meisei University): "Shy on the First
Novel: The Problems of Publishing Novels in 17th and 18th Century Japan;" Suyoung Son
(Cornell University): "Nam Kongch’ŏl, Qian Qianyi, and Banned Books Across National
Border;" Yung-chang Tung (Harvard University): "Problematic Laughter: Jokes,
Anecdotes, and the Production of Notebooks in Middle-Period China."
Location: At the Sheraton Boston Hotel and the Hynes Convention Center, Boston
**Cancelled, due to COVID-19 travel restrictions: Thursday, March 26, 2020, 5:15 pm
Harvard English Department Renaissance Colloquium
"Fluid Borders: Rethinking Power Centers in Shakespeare’s Rome"
Silvia Bigliazzi (University of Verona)
Barker 114, 12 Quincy St., Cambridge
https://sites.google.com/harvard.edu/english-graduate-colloquia/renaissance…
Thursday, March 26, 2020, 3:00-6:00pm
Minda de Gunzberg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
Celebrating French Women Writers: A conference t launch the two-volume publication of
Femmes et littérature. Une histoire culturelle (Éditions Gallimard)
Speakers include: Martine Reid (Lille); Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet (Sorbonne); Alison
Rice (Notre Dame); Christie McDonald (Harvard); Caleb Shelburne (Harvard); Kylie Sago
(Harvard); Sanam Esfahani-Nader (Amherst).
Location: Minda de Gunzberg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
Sponsors for the conference include the Bacon Funds and the Department of Romance
Languages and Literatures,The France and the World Seminar (Mahindra Humanities Center),
Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, all of Harvard University; The Consulate
General of France in Boston, and with the support of the Cultural Services of the French
Embassy in the United States.
Friday, March 27, 2020, 3:00pm
Providence College Humanities Forum
Lecture: Revenge, Religion, and Resistance: Reading Shakespeare’s History Plays
Peter Lake, Vanderbilt University
Ruane Center for the Humanities 105, Providence College, Providence, RI
https://arts-sciences.providence.edu/humanities-forum/
March 31, 2020, 12pm
Harvard Early Science Working Group
"Skilling Up: The Officer-Craftsman in Late Chosŏn Korea, 1592–1882."
Hyeok Hweon "H.H." Kang (Harvard, History and East Asian Languages)
Comment: Eugenio Menegon, Boston University, History
Location: Science Center 252, Science Center 252, 1 Oxford St., Cambridge
March 31, 2020, 4:30 P.M.
Brown University Medieval & Early Modern History Seminar
“Monastic Technologies of Authority: Cistercian Diplomatic Praxis, Crusade, and the
Colonization of the Midi”
Leland Grigoli
Pavilion Room, Department of History, 79 Brown St., Providence RI
https://blogs.brown.edu/memhs/
Wednesday, April 1, 2020, 4pm
John Carter Brown Library Fellow’s Talk
“The coming of the kingdom: the Muisca, the Catholic Reformation, and the Spanish monarchy
in the New Kingdom of Granada”
Juan Cobo Betancourt (University of California, Santa Barbara)
John Carter Brown Library, MacMillan Reading Room, 94 George Street, Providence, RI
https://jcblibrary.org/events/coming-kingdom-muisca-catholic-reformation-an…
**(CHANGE of date and location:) Thursday, April 2, 2020, 5:15pm
Harvard English Department Renaissance Colloquium, Graduate Workshop
"The Prefatory Letter to Gorboduc: Rape, Revenge, Paratext"
Bailey Sincox (Harvard)
Barker 218, 12 Quincy St., Cambridge MA
https://sites.google.com/harvard.edu/english-graduate-colloquia/renaissance…
**Tuesday, April 7, 2020 - 6:00pm
Mahindra Humanities Center Harvard Seminar on 18th Century Studies
"The Marvelous and Incredible Style Revolution around the Merveilleuses and
Incroyables"
Anne Higonnet, Barnard College and Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
Room 133, Barker Center
http://mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu/content/eighteenth-century-studies
Monday, April 13, 4:30 pm
Early Modern History Workshop Harvard
Co-sponsored with the MIT History Faculty
"Monsters in the Closet: The Biopolitics of the Far North in Early Modern
Europe"
Surekha Davies (Utrecht University)
MIT, E51-095
https://earlymod.fas.harvard.edu
April 14, 3pm
Harvard Early Science Working Group
“Material Ascensions: Engineering Astronautics in Seventeenth-Century Science Fiction”
Karina Mathew (Harvard, English)
Comment: Hannah Marcus (Harvard, History of Science)
Location: Science Center, Room 359, 1 Oxford St., Cambridge
April 15, 2020
CFP deadline: New England Colloquium in Early Modern Philosophy (NECEMP)
conference to be held on September 25 to 27, 2020 at Brown University. Please email for
more information: Justin_Broackes@brown.edu<mailto:Justin_Broackes@brown.edu>
Thursday, April 16, 5:15 pm
Early Modern History Workshop Harvard
Co-sponsored with the Medieval English Colloquium
"Predestination and Piety in the Early Modern World"—a debate
James Simpson (English, Harvard) and David Hall (Harvard Divinity School, emeritus),
moderated by Michelle Sanchez (Harvard Divinity School)
Robinson Hall, History Department Conference Room (former Lower Library), Harvard Yard
https://earlymod.fas.harvard.edu
Friday and Saturday April 17-18, 2020
41st Annual Medieval and Renaissance Forum:
Scent and Fragrance in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
Keene State College
Keene, NH, USA
More information: Dr. Robert G. Sullivan, Assistant Forum Director at
sullivan@german.umass.edu<mailto:sullivan@german.umass.edu>.
4/20/2020 4:00pm to 6:00pm
“The Moral Economies of Early Modern Europe”
Francesca Trivellato, History, Institute for Advanced Study Princeton
Robinson Hall, History Department Conference Room (formerly known as the Lower Library),
Harvard University
Wednesday, April 22, 2020, 4:30pm
Providence College Seminar on the History of Early America
Workshop: From Creek (Mvskoke) to Cherokee (Tsalagi): The Entangled Histories of Native
America, 1600-1800
Bryan Rindfleisch, Marquette University
The Ruane Center for the Humanities LL49, Providence College, Providence, RI
https://history.providence.edu/providence-college-seminar-on-the-history-of…
(for pre-circulated chapter email aweimer(a)providence.edu)
Wednesday, April 22, 2020, 6pm
Center for the Study of the Early Modern World
Intellectual Immigration? Epic and the Case Against Border Walls for Early Modern Literary
Disciplines
Keith Sidwell, University College Cork and University of Calgary, Canada
Annmary Brown Memorial, Room 110, Brown University, Providence RI
https://events.brown.edu/early-modern-world/view/event/event_id/157009
Thursday, April 23, 5:15 pm
Early Modern History Workshop Harvard
Co-sponsored with the Renaissance Colloquium and Department of English
"Tense Futures: Shakespeare's Macbeth and Gwinne's Tres Sibyllae"
Daniel Blank (Harvard Society of Fellows)
Robinson Hall, History Department Conference Room (formerly known as the Lower Library)
https://earlymod.fas.harvard.edu
Friday, April 24, 2020 - 5:30pm
Mahindra Humanities Center Harvard Seminar on Shakespearian Studies
“Desdemona’s Honest Friend”
Jeremy Lopez, University of Toronto
http://mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu/content/shakespearean-studies
Apr. 28, 2020, 4:30 P.M.
Brown University Medieval & Early Modern History Seminar
TBD
Amy Remensnyder
Pavilion Room, Department of History, 79 Brown St., Providence RI
https://blogs.brown.edu/memhs/
*Wednesday, April 29, 2020, 12-1pm
The 2020 Erasmus Lectures on the History and Civilization of the Netherlands and Flanders,
Harvard
Part III: "The Plantation: Violence and Imaginary Order in the Gardens of Suriname
and Amsterdam"
Pepijn Brandon (VU Amsterdam)
History Department Conference Room, Robinson Hall 125, 35 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA
02138
(A light lunch will be served.)
The final lecture explores the plantation as an ideal-type of colonial governance and
capitalist ordering through the lens of a strange historic coincidence. In 1683 the City
of Amsterdam acquired a 1/3 part ownership of the plantation colony Suriname. That very
same year, the mayors of Amsterdam decided to designate an entire neighborhood for leisure
gardens, and called it “The Plantation”. Seventeenth-century Europeans depicted the
plantation, the site of unspeakable horrors, as a model of rationally ordered agriculture,
and often gave their plantations the same names as their domestic leisure gardens. This
lecture will examine deeper connections between rationality and order, chaos and brutality
behind this horticultural imagery.
*Wednesday, April 29, 2 PM - 4 PM
Dissertation Defense: "The Black Spaniards: The Color of Political Authority in
Seventeenth-Century Lima"
Sally Hayes, Harvard
Robinson Hall, Harvard Yard, Warren Center Conference Room (#B21) (formerly Basement
Seminar Room), 35 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
Wednesday, April 29, 2020, 6-7:30pm
Center for the Study of the Early Modern World
Mountains, Missives and Mental Travel: Seneca and the Renaissance
Syrithe Pugh, University of Aberdeen
Annmary Brown Memorial, Room 110, Brown University, Providence, RI
Free and open to the public
https://events.brown.edu/early-modern-world/view/event/event_id/163986
Thursday, April 30, 2020 - 9:00am
Mahindra Humanities Center Harvard Seminar on History of the Book
Harvard-Yale Graduate Conference in Book History
Yale University
http://mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu/content/history-book
Thursday, April 30, 2020 - 6:00pm
Mahindra Humanities Center Harvard Seminar on 18th Century Studies
“Persuasion's Queer Drift”
Paul Kelleher, Emory University
Room 133, Barker Center, 12 Quincy St., Cambridge MA
http://mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu/content/eighteenth-century-studies
May 5, 2020, 12pm
Harvard Early Science Working Group
"The Deep History of the Spreadsheet"
Ashley Gonik (Harvard, History)
Comment: Katharina Piechocki (Harvard, Comparative Literature)
Location: Science Center 252, 1 Oxford St., Cambridge
Wednesday, May 6, 2020, 4:00pm
John Carter Brown Library Fellow’s Talk
“Comets and eclipses across the Americas: writing trans-regional histories of astronomy in
the colonial world”
Thomás Haddad (Universidade de São Paulo)
John Carter Brown Library, MacMillan Reading Room, 94 George Street, Providence, RI
https://jcblibrary.org/events/comets-and-eclipses-across-americas-writing-t…
Wednesday, May 6, 2020, 4:30pm
Providence College Seminar on the History of Early America
Workshop: Global Mexico City in the Seventeenth Century
Tatiana Seijas, Rutgers University
The Ruane Center for the Humanities LL49, Providence College, Providence, RI
https://history.providence.edu/providence-college-seminar-on-the-history-of…
(for pre-circulated chapter email
aweimer@providence.edu<mailto:aweimer@providence.edu>)
Wednesday, 5/13/2020 4:30pm
Wesleyan Renaissance Seminar
“The Very Picture of Civility: Universalism and the Mughal Manuscript Workshop, c.
1580–1630”
Yael Rice (Assistant Professor of Art & the History of Art, Amherst College)
Location: Wesleyan University, Boger Hall, Room 113,
http://rensem.site.wesleyan.edu/
For a copy of the paper, if you plan to participate in a meeting, please contact Esther
Moran at emmoran (at)
wesleyan.edu
Wednesday, June 3, 2020, 4pm
John Carter Brown Library Fellow’s Talk
“A Black Man from India”: Between Slavery and freedom in the Early Modern Iberian World
Norah Gharala (University of Houston)
MacMillan Reading Room, John Carter Brown Library, 94 George Street, Providence, RI
https://jcblibrary.org/events/black-man-india-between-slavery-and-freedom-e…
August 15, 2020
Deadline CFP: The 2020 New England Renaissance Conference at Boston College (Saturday,
October 24, 2020), Theme: “Early Modern Europe: From Below, at the Margins, Behind the
Scenes.” Info: Prof. Franco Mormando (mormando (at)
bc.edu)
*If you would like your announcement to be posted in an upcoming Early Mod Events listing
please send your event details to: earlymod(a)fas.harvard.edu
To be included in the Early Mod Events mailing, the event must take place in 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 (Building, Room, St., Address, Institution, City, State)
* Event must take place in the greater Boston area.
Additional info (no more than a couple of sentences)
Website URL
RSVP or Registration information/link