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 are 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(a)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
Tuesday, March 21, 2023, 12pm
Harvard Early Sciences Working Group
Kelly McCay (History), “The ABCs of Universal Characters”
Hybrid format: In-person at Science Center room 252 (SC252), Harvard University, 1 Oxford
St, Cambridge MA, 02138 and on Zoom (email Mateo Montoya, mateomontoya(a)g.harvard.edu, to
register either for the in-person meeting or for the Zoom link, and to receive the
precirculated paper)
*Tuesday, March 21, 2023, 4pm
Harvard Mahindra Center Seminar on German Studies: New Perspectives
Ben Morgan, Oxford University: Rethinking Critique: Dialectic of Enlightenment and Models
of Cultural Evolution.
Room 359 (Nebel Room), Barker Center, Harvard University, 12 Quincy St, Cambridge MA
Tuesday, March 21, 4:30pm
MEMHS, Brown University
Stacey Murrell (Brown University). More information will be coming soon.
Location: Brown University, to be announced. More information:
https://blogs.brown.edu/memhs/<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?…
March 21st 2023, 4:30pm - 6:30pm
Five College Renaissance Seminar
Christopher Nygren, Department of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of
Pittsburgh: 'Salt, Water, and Stone: The Ecology of Art in Renaissance Venice'
Kinney Center for Renaissance Studies, 650 East Pleasant St., Amherst
https://www.umass.edu/renaissance/event/fcrs-nygren-2023
**Wednesday, March 22, 5pm EST
Harvard English Department Renaissance Colloquium
Graduate Student Paper Workshop: Zichen Liu
In-person event. Please email vpipas(a)fas.harvard.edu for the precirculated paper and more
information.
https://sites.google.com/g.harvard.edu/harvard-eng-grad-colloquium/renaissa…
March 23, 11:30am
Center for the Study of the Early Modern World, Cogut Institute for the Humanities, Brown
University
Center of Excellence: New Perspectives on New France
Bertrand Van Ruymbeke (Universite de Vincennes-Saint-Denis (Paris VIII): "L'
Amerique dans les concours des Academies en France a l' epoque des Lumieres. Les
concoursde Lyon (1781-1789) et de Toulouse (1784)" [in French]
Webinar. Registration
link<https://brown.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_BDMUm8QrSWS0Ahk7LSl2dg>
**March 23, 6pm
Harvard Mahindra Humanities Center Seminar on Women, Gender, and Culture in the Early
Modern World
"Margery Kempe’s Thermal Dynamics"
Micah Goodrich, Department of English, Boston University
Barker Center, room 024, 12 Quincy St, Cambridge MA
https://mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu/women-gender-and-culture-early-m…
Wednesday, March 29, 2023, 4:30pm-6:15pm
Wesleyan University Renaissance Seminar
Sara Díaz, Fairfield University: "Margherita Costa's Love Letters. An
Introduction."
Boger Hall 113, 41 Wyllys Ave., Middletown, CT 06459
For more information, see the Wesleyan Renaissance Seminar
website<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__rensem.site…Et9RKM5DQ5cfvdt2pFU&e=>.
Tuesday, April 4, 2023, 12pm
Harvard Early Sciences Working Group
Valeria López Fadul (Assistant Professor of History and Latin American Studies, Wesleyan
University), "Do Fish Breathe? Francisco Hernández, the Americas, and Renaissance
Natural History.”
Hybrid format: In-person at Science Center room 252 (SC252), Harvard University, 1 Oxford
St, Cambridge MA, 02138 and on Zoom (email Mateo Montoya, mateomontoya(a)g.harvard.edu, to
register either for the in-person meeting or for the Zoom link, and to receive the
precirculated paper)
Wednesday, April 5, 2023, 5pm EST
Harvard English Department Renaissance Colloquium
Folger Institute Information Session with Owen Williams, Interim Director of the Folger
Institute and Associate Director for Scholarly Programs, on opportunities for graduate
students of Renaissance literature at the Folger Institute.
Zoom
registration<https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAvd-6hrjgrHtYXPhj8pOGEio1ZDZqzTKZ_>
https://sites.google.com/g.harvard.edu/harvard-eng-grad-colloquium/renaissa…
Tuesday, April 11, 5-6:30pm
Co-sponsored by the Early Modern Workshop of the History Department and the Weatherhead
Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Early Modern Workshop on Ways of Knowing Consent in Early Modern Europe, organized by
Sonia Tycko (PhD 2019)
Location: Robinson Hall conference room (formerly Lower Library, on the ground floor),
Harvard Yard.
The panel will consist of three fifteen-minute papers, followed by Q&A.
Elizabeth Kamali (Law, Harvard), chair
Carissa M. Harris (English, Temple), "'Sey what ye wyll': Epistemologies of
Sexual Consent in Premodern Pastourelles"
Emanuele Conte (Law, Roma Tre) "The Most Presumed Consent: Mario Salamonio
(1450-1533) and the Social Contract"
Sonia Tycko (History, Edinburgh), "The Currency of Consent: Coins and Labor Contracts
in Early Modern England"
For more information on the Historicizing Consent research network:
https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/historicizingconsent
*Tuesday, April 11, 5pm
Harvard Mahindra Center Seminar on Renaissance Studies
Lecture: “Between Sacrality and Perspectivalism: Theories of Seventeenth-Century
Spectatorship in José Antonio Maravall and Louis Marin”
Mark Franko, Boyer College of Music and Dance, Temple University
Zoom registration see
webpage<https://mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu/event/between-sacrali…
or email Lisa Kostur at kostur(a)g.harvard.edu
**Thursday, April 13, 2023, 5:30pm
Harvard Mahindra Humanities Center on Women, Gender, and Culture in the Early Modern
World
Kimberly Coles, University of Maryland: TBA
Barker Center, room 133, 12 Quincy St, Cambridge MA
https://mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu/event/kimberly-coles-tba
Tuesday, April 18, 4:30pm
MEMHS, Brown University
Neil Safier (Brown University). “Translating the Plantationocene from the Prerevolutionary
Caribbean to Colonial Brazil.”
Location: Brown University, to be announced. More information:
https://blogs.brown.edu/memhs/<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?…
How was the language of plantation society ported from the French and English-dominated
Caribbean to colonial Brazil in the eighteenth century? What role did agro-industrial
treatises play in the perpetuation of systems of enslaved labor as plantation societies
shifted from sugar production to a wider array of foodstuffs, beverages, and
profit-oriented utilitarian crops? Long understood to be powerful manuals for naturalists
and plantation masters alike, these pragmatic instructional texts, focused around
questions of climate, natural history, and commodity-driven agriculture, have only
recently been understood to have circulated outside the narrow Caribbean world for which
they were destined. One iconic protagonist of this translation process was the Franciscan
friar José Mariano da Conceição Vellozo (1742-1811), who served as a linguistic conduit
for moving natural knowledge from an array of texts produced in colonial cultures around
the globe into print – and into Portuguese in particular. This talk examines Vellozo’s
multi-volume and multi-faceted Fazendeiro do Brazil (1798-1806) with an eye toward
connecting the eighteenth-century natural sciences, the ambitions of expanding
plantation-based economies, and the politics of translation across the multilingual
geographies of the eighteenth-century Atlantic world.
Wednesday, April 19, 2023, 5pm EST
Harvard English Department Renaissance Colloquium
Debapriya Sarkar, Assistant Professor of English at University of Connecticut,
"Geographies of Race in The Tempest and Antony and Cleopatra."
In-person event. Barker Center, 211, Harvard University, 12 Quincy St., Cambridge MA
https://sites.google.com/g.harvard.edu/harvard-eng-grad-colloquium/renaissa…
April 20, 5:30 PM
Center for the Study of the Early Modern World, Cogut Institute for the Humanities, Brown
University
Center of Excellence: New Perspectives on New France
Micah True (University of Alberta, Canada)
"lndigenous Literacies and the Jesuit Relations from New France: The Case of Joseph
Chi hoatenhwa"
Webinar. Registration
link<https://brown.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_9gDkKN2yQPyQPNS5JmWCiw>
Thursday, April 20, 2023, 7:00pm
British actor and writer Paterson Joseph will read from his brand new novel, The Secret
Diaries of Ignatius Sancho. Co-sponsored by the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard
Hutchins Center and Harvard MHC Seminar on Eighteenth-Century Studies
Location: TBA, Harvard University
The novel, The Secret Life of Charles Ignatius
Sancho<https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2…
is based on the life and published letters (1780) of the Black British letter-writer. The
novel was released in the UK in October 2022 and will be released in the US in April 2023.
The novel also draws upon the one-man performance Paterson created in 2014, Sancho, A
Remembrance<https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A…amp;reserved=0>.
**Friday, April 21, 2023, 5:30 pm reception, 6:00 pm Seminar
Shakespearean Studies Seminar, Mahindra Humanities Center, Harvard University
Gregory Semenza, Professor of English, University of Connecticut, “‘Please, just no
Shakespeare’: Reinventing Authorship in Station Eleven.”
Location: In-person Event, Mahindra Humanities Center, Harvard University
Room 133, Barker Center, 12 Quincy St, Cambridge MA
*Friday, April 21, 2023, 4:30pm
Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies, Dan S. Collins Lecture
“Early Modern Erotica & the Pleasures of Paranoid Reading”
Melissa Sanchez, Director of Penn’s Center for Research in Feminist, Queer, and
Transgender Studies
Location: The Old Chapel, 144, Hicks Way, Amherst, MA
Tuesday, April 25, 2023, 12pm
Harvard Early Sciences Working Group
Maryam Patton (History and Middle Eastern Studies), “Past as Prelude: The Role of
Historical Knowledge Among Early Ottoman Astrologers”
Hybrid format: In-person at Science Center room 252 (SC252), Harvard University, 1 Oxford
St, Cambridge MA, 02138 and on Zoom (email Mateo Montoya, mateomontoya(a)g.harvard.edu, to
register either for the in-person meeting or for the Zoom link, and to receive the
precirculated paper)
Wednesday, April 26, 2023, 5:30pm
Center for the Study of the Early Modern World, Cogut Institute for the Humanities, Brown
University
Dr. Syrithe Pugh, Reader in English at the University of Aberdeen, Human Resources: Class
and Cannibalism in ‘The Hock-Cart’.
Pembroke Hall, 305, Brown University, Providence, RI
Thursday, April 27 to Sat, April 29, 2023
Center for the Study of the Early Modern World, Cogut Institute for the Humanities, Brown
University
Conference: Nahuatl Texts and Contexts: Annual Meeting of the Association of Nahuatl
Scholars
Alumnae Hall, Crystal Room, Brown University, Providence RI
Website
Link<https://events.brown.edu/early-modern-world/event/240556-early-mode…
Monday, 5/1/2023
Harvard Mahindra Humanities Center Seminar on Book History
Graduate Conference
Location: Brown University, Providence RI (In-person event)
Wednesday, May 3, 2023, 5pm EST
Harvard English Department Renaissance Colloquium
Closing Event
In-person event
https://sites.google.com/g.harvard.edu/harvard-eng-grad-colloquium/renaissa…
Thursday, May 4, 1:30 – 3:30 p.m.
Presented by the Harvard Warren Center’s Workshop on “Capitalism’s Hardwiring: Money,
Credit, and Finance in a Globalizing World, 1620-2020”
Simon Middleton (College of William and Mary), “Current Money and Community in Early
America”
Harvard Law School (WCC 3019)
Monday, May 8, 2023, 1:00pm to 5:30pm
Harvard MHC Seminar on Eighteenth-Century Studies
Symposium in two parts, presenting ideas recovered from “The Radical Eighteenth Century”
Location: Thomson Room of the Barker Center, Harvard University (12 Quincy St., Cambridge
MA)
Twelve leading feminist scholars, including Ros Ballaster, Kristina Straub, Mona Narain,
Jennie Batchelor, Tita Chico, Betty Schellenburg, Manushag Powell, Regulus Allen, and
Susan Carlisle will present ideas recovered from “The Radical Eighteenth Century.” The
first roundtable discussion, from 1-3 will be about “Critiques of Capitalism” that
surfaced in the eighteenth century. The second roundtable discussion from 3:30 to 5:30,
will be about those ideas that went against the grain of individualism but were examples
of ”Thinking Through the Community.” Questions will also be taken from the floor and
discussion among the participants and the audience will be encouraged.
Tuesday, May 16, 2023, 12pm
Harvard Early Sciences Working Group
Spencer Weinreich (Harvard Society of Fellows), “Daily Bread: Towards a Material History
of the Eucharist”
Hybrid format: In-person at Science Center room 252 (SC252), Harvard University, 1 Oxford
St, Cambridge MA, 02138 and on Zoom (email Mateo Montoya, mateomontoya(a)g.harvard.edu, to
register either for the in-person meeting or for the Zoom link, and to receive the
precirculated paper)
June 5-9, 2023
Co-sponsored by Folger Institute and Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance
Studies, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Introduction to English Paleography (course)
Course Director: Dr. Heather
Wolfe<https://www.folger.edu/staff/dr-heather-wolfe>fe>,
Curator of Manuscripts and Archivist, Folger Shakespeare Library.
This weeklong course provides an intensive introduction to handwriting in early modern
England, with a particular emphasis on the English secretary hand of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. The course will highlight the strengths of our rare book collection
and materials related to The Renaissance of the Earth. Find more information
here<https://www.folger.edu/research/the-folger-institute/scholarly-prog…
Application deadline 6 March 2023 was for admission and grants-in-aid for Folger Institute
Consortium<https://www.folger.edu/research/the-folger-institute/scholarl…
affiliates.
***
*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 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