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Early modern religious controversies

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Early Modern Newsletter August 2024

Recent research, forthcoming events, blog posts, videos, podcasts, tweets & tidbits.

Gender issues

Sexual Abuse and the Crusades Monograph, July 2024

Steve Tribble on the knights who went rogue in the Holy Land.

Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal Call for papers

Submissions for the Fall 2025 / Volume 20.1 Forum on Early Modern Women in Wartime. Submissions are due November 15, 2024 and should be 3,500 words including footnotes.

Women in Power, Powerful Women: Medieval and Early Modern Insights Workshop

"Early modern women’s exercise of formal and informal power in domestic, religious, economic, political and public spaces" (Adelaide, November 15, 2024).

Ravenous: A Life of Barbara Villiers, Charles II's Most Infamous Mistress Forthcoming monograph

Andrea Zuvich will give a talk on the subject of her forthcoming book at Donington le Heath on Saturday, August 31.

Early Modern Domestic Abuse Blog post

Piers Mucklejohn examines an early modern ballad and its accompanying woodcut.

The Alchemical Feminine: Women, Gender and Sexuality in Alchemical Images Illustrated book

M.E. Warlick takes the reader on a pictorial tour of women in alchemy.

Food and health

Eating Right in the Renaissance, Food in Early Modern Europe YouTube video

Ken Albala talks about beans and digestion, cooking and religion, food and medicine, etc.

Culinary Texts in Context, 1500–1800 Edited volume, July 2024

Essays on manuscript recipe books in early modern Europe, compiled by Sarah Kernan and Helga Müllneritsch.

Ambroise Paré and his Context: Mapping the Territory of a Renaissance Physician Webinar

Elena Berger will talk about Paré "as an example that sheds light on sixteenth-century medicine" and the practical application of his inventions and the light they shed on our understanding of the phenomenon of technological innovation in the Renaissance.

The early modern book

Reading Practice: The Pursuit of Natural Knowledge from Manuscript to Print Monograph, August 2024

Melissa Reynolds on "the knowledge economy that shaped medicine and science in early modern England", with a particular focus on "the effects of the Reformation on attitudes toward nature and the human body".

Miniature books X video

The latest in a series of Boldleian Library tweets. This one features the London Almanack.

Early Printed Books in Antwerp Fellowship programme

Two short-term fellowships offered by the Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library and the Museum Plantin-Moretus (Antwerp). Application deadline: October 1st, 2024.

William Austin, Haec homo: Wherein the Excellency of the Creation of Woman, is Described (1638) Blog post

The latest in the Early Modern Book Ownership series. Joseph Henry turns the spotlight on a book given to one Anne Henry by her brother, with a dedicatory poem.

Buying a Book in Early Modern England YouTube video

"What did shops look like? How did potential customers interact with booksellers and physical books they were interested in? What exactly did customers leave the shop with when they followed through on a purchase? And when they did, how soon after buying" Aaron Pratt discusses aspects of the early modern book trade.

Visualizing Russia in Early Modern Europe Monograph

Nancy Kollmann "enhances our understanding of Western knowledge of Muscovy by examining not only the printed texts of travellers’ accounts, but also the illustrations that accompanied them".

Early modern Christianity

Fourteenth Annual REFORC Conference on Early Modern Christianity Call for papers

The conference will be held in Vienna on May 22-24, 2025. Plenary papers will be on the topic of religion and rebellion.

Faith in War: Religion and the Military in Germany, c.1500-1650 Monograph

Nikolas M. Funke on the religious dimension of military life in the Holy Roman Empire.

Early modern lives

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Additions

New entries for the early modern period.

The Tudor World in the Wolsey Rooms New permanent exhibition

"Discover the oldest rooms at Hampton Court Palace and meet the ordinary men and women who enabled the Tudor court to exist and flourish."

Crowds in pre-modern and modern history Hybrid conference

Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Milan, September 12-14, 2024.

‘Instructive types’ or mere ‘fancies’: assessing French fashion prints in the library of Samuel Pepys Open-access article

Mario Avidon explores the fashion prints in the Pepys Library at Magdalene. Always happy to see stuff relating to my alma mater!

Games, Sports, and Shakespeare Quiz

"Try out your knowledge of games, sports, and Shakespeare with these questions from the Folger Shakespeare Library." Full disclosure: I got six out of seven, so it's obviously not that difficult!

The Sport of Kings - and Protectors! Blog post

More on sport. Patrick Little discusses Cromwell's love of horse racing.

Thomas Nashe and Literary Performance Edited volume

Chloe Kathleen Preedy and Rachel Willie present a series of essays illustrating "how Nashe excelled at textual performance but his personae became a contested site as readers actively participated and engaged in the reception of Nashe's public image and his works".

Will of the Month: A Lincolnshire landowner and his ‘Perewigges’ Blog post

Austin Hamilton delves into the will of Thomas Pechill, a 17th-century landowner.

Mary Tudor Episode One Video

The first of a three-part series on the Winchester Cathedral website. Narrated by Johanna Strong, with Aisha Al-Sadie acting as Queen Mary I.

Notions of Privacy at Early Modern European Courts Edited volume

A compilation of papers put together by Dustin M. Neighbors, Lars Cyril Nørgaard and Elena Woodacre.

Spycraft: From the Elizabethans to the Restoration Podcast

"Suzannah Lipscomb welcomes Pete Langman and Professor Nadine Akkerman to delve into the practices of espionage and reveal how the line between spy and criminal was easily blurred depending on who was in favour, and who was betrayed."

Shaking Hands and the Politics of Touch in Early Modern England

In this open-access article, John Walter examines "the micro-politics of shaking hands".

What Happened During a Duel in Early Modern Europe & North America? Blog post

Alexander Gale on satisfying one's honour in the early modern world.

 

Renaissance Society of America (RSA) and Shakespeare Association of America (SAA) Joint conference

Boston, Massachusetts. March 20-22, 2025.

Early modern theatre

Shakespeare's Borrowed Feathers YouTube video

Darren Freebury-Jones talks about Marlowe, Kyd, Greene and others, and the role of data analytics in modern author attribution studies, in anticipation of his book on the subject, which will come out in October, 2024.

Marlowe’s Collaborator on Doctor Faustus Journal article

Darren Freebury-Jones has also just published an article making the case that "Henry Porter is a likelier candidate than Nashe for Marlowe’s collaborator on Doctor Faustus."

Imagining Time in the English Chronicle Play Podcast

Miranda Melcher hosts Marissa Nicosia in a discussion of the latter's book of the same title. Nicosia argues that these plays did not merely portray the past, but also projected possible futures through their accounts of verifiable historical events.

Essay prize

Hakluyt Society Essay Prize

Open to research students and recent graduates.

The early modern twitterverse

If there's something you'd like to see included in next month's roundup of early modern news, let me know, and I'll include it if I can!