Generously supported by the UConn Humanities Institute (UCHI), the Early Modern Speaker Series brings to Storrs each year distinguished guest speakers from around the country. These one-hour lectures are catered, afternoon events held in the attractive and comfortable UCHI Conference room. They are designed to attract not just Early Modern scholars but interested researchers and students in all fields and disciplines.
Upcoming Speakers
Spring 2024
February 9th: Professor Amanda Eubanks Winkler (Music, Rutgers University) presents, "Then and Now: Alice Egerton in Milton's Comus, 1634/2016."
April 26th: Professor Kathleen Perry Long (Romance Studies, Cornell University) presents, "Gendering Necropolitics: From Jean Bodin to The Island of Hermaphrodites."
Recent Speakers
Spring 2022
Professor Carol Pal (History, Bennington College) presented "Another Kind of Archive: Female Scholars and the album amicorum."
Fall 2021
Professor Sarah Ross (History, Boston College) presented "The Alchemical Theater of don Pietro Paolo Andreini."
Spring 2021
Ayanna Thompson (Regents Professor of English, Arizona State University), "On Protean Acting in Shakespeare: Race & Virtuosity"
Fall 2020
Pat Palmer, Deirdre Nic Chárthaigh, and Evan Bourke (Maynooth University, Ireland) gave a presentation on MACMORRIS, an Irish Research Council Laureate project that seeks to map the full range and richness of cultural activity, across languages and ethnic groups, in Ireland from 1541 to 1691.
MACMORRIS sets out to recover the vibrancy and complexity of Ireland’s transformative years between Henry VIII’s assumption of the kingship of Ireland in 1541 and the Treaty of Limerick in 1691.
It seeks to represent the dramatic period of conflict, change, and innovation which transformed Ireland. In building a dataset of everyone broadly defined as a ‘cultural actor’ for whom a record survives during that 150-year period, it will provide a research engine for a newly interdisciplinary and multilingual engagement with a period that was, itself, ineluctably plural, linguistically and culturally. You can find out more information about the project via twitter or their website.
The talk was held virtually and was recorded. It can be viewed below.
Spring 2020
Professor Amy Rodgers (English, Mount Holyoke College), "Partial View: Social Class, Shakespeare, and the For-Profit Theatre"
Spring 2019
Professor James D. Rice (English and American History, Tufts University), "'Early Modern' and 'Indigenous' Histories"
Fall 2018
Professor Jane Hwang Degenhardt (English, UMass Amherst), "The 'Kindness' of Humans: Empathy, Race, and Kind in The Tempest and The Shape of Water"
Past Speakers
- Pamela Brown (English, UConn Stamford)
- William J. Bulman (History, Lehigh University)
- Malcolm Smuts (History, UMASS Boston)
- Julian Yates (English, University of Delaware).
Please stay tuned to our events calendar about upcoming Speaker Series events!