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<mailto: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(a)gmail.com for more info
Upcoming Fortnight: Events
*Wednesday, October 11, 2023, 6pm
Harvard Mahindra Humanities Center Seminar on Native Cultures of the Americas
Rachel Wheeler, Indiana University Indianapolis and Sarah Eyerly, Florida State
University: “Native Biography as Process and Product: Perspectives on History,
Storytelling, and Knowledge Production”
Room 114, Harvard Barker Center, 12 Quincy St, Cambridge MA
Historian Rachel Wheeler and musicologist Sarah Eyerly will speak about their efforts to
extend the method of relational historiography they employed in their Singing Box 331
project to a co-authored biography of Mohican leader, Joshua (1742–1806), that centers the
relationships that anchored him to family, community, and land in the past and present.
More
Information<https://mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu/event/native-biog…
Thursday, October 12, 2023, 4:30pm
Five College Renaissance
Seminar<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.umass.e…
Eyob Derillo (Curator for the Ethiopic and Ethiopian Collections, British Library)
A Virtual Tour of the British Library's Illuminated Ethiopian Manuscripts
Virtual event on Zoom
[
register<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__umass-2Dam…]
*Thursday, October 12, 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 19, 26; Nov 16, 30).
Kates Room, Room 201, Warren House, Harvard Yard
No RSVP required.
*Friday, October 13, 2023, 5pm
Harvard Mahindra Humanities Center for Persian and Persianate Studies
Thibaut d’Hubert, University of Chicago: Equal of the Ancients, Pride of the Moderns’: The
Poetics of Faizi’s Ghazals
Room 133, Harvard Barker Center, 12 Quincy St, Cambridge MA
More
Information<https://mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu/event/equal-ancie…
**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<mailto: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/renaissa…
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:
1. Alice Dailey (Professor of English & Director of Faculty Affairs, Villanova
University)
2. Suparna Roychoudhury (Associate Professor of English & Associate Provost and
Associate Dean of Faculty, Mount Holyoke)
3. Reginald Wilburn (Associate Professor of English & Associate Provost, Texas
Christian University)
Location: Online
(Registration<https://wellesley.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMqcuyspjgqGNIY5QRFew-xwzjEnhAHadzP#/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<http://events.brown.edu/early-modern-world/>
Events later in the Semester:
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<mailto:brianabrightly@g.harvard.edu> or
analuiza_nicolae@g.harvard.edu<mailto: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/tJYkdO6qrzItEtx3Y7IvRpJoKGvu0UxO2l…
*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.
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/renaissa…
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<mailto:brianabrightly@g.harvard.edu> or
analuiza_nicolae@g.harvard.edu<mailto: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/renaissa…
*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<https://events.brown.edu/early-modern-world/event/265712-44th-will…
and MEMHS Brown University Medieval & Early Modern History
Seminar<https://www.brownmemhs.com/william-church-memorial-lecture>
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<https://mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu/seminars/shakespearea…
*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<https://mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu/event/looking-slo…
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<mailto:brianabrightly@g.harvard.edu> or
analuiza_nicolae@g.harvard.edu<mailto: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/renaissa…
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 8:00pm
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<mailto:brianabrightly@g.harvard.edu> or
analuiza_nicolae@g.harvard.edu<mailto: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<https://www.mfa.org/exhibition/strong-women-in-renaissance-italy#fi…96>.
Location: Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave, Boston
https://sites.google.com/g.harvard.edu/harvard-eng-grad-colloquium/renaissa…
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<http://events.brown.edu/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<mailto: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