Contemporary discussions of risk and speculation often identify these concepts as distinguishing features of modern (or postmodern) societies. With this year’s EMC theme, we seek to explore and investigate early modern English cognates, forebears, and analogues of “risk” – including, but not limited to, “hazard” and “venture” – in early modern literature and history from religious, economic, political, and environmental perspectives.
Please visit our “Risk, Crisis, Speculation: 1500-1800” conference website here.
2012-2013 Events
Theme-Related Courses
Fall 2012
ENGL 231 | Early Modern Risk (Graduate)
Inspired by the “Speculative Risk” programming of last year, this course will pursue the topic of risk in early modern England. In most contemporary discussions of the topic, risk is correlated with modernity. In this course we will address the emergence of some modern conceptions of risk in early modern economic practice and political theory. We will also explore premodern cognates to the notion of risk in concepts like chance and hazard, contingency and calculation, uncertainty and exposure to loss. In our inquiry into early modern risk, we will read More’s Utopia, Bacon’s New Atlantis, book two of Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, and Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice and The Winter’s Tale. In the course of our conversation we will also touch on the thought of Aristotle, Augustine, Luther, Hobbes, Blumenberg, Derrida, and Butler as we discuss topics ranging from utopian desire and societal engineering to the rise of speculative capitalism and insurance, from the dangers of maritime trade and metaphors of shipwreck to moral philosophy and the technologies of the self, from the hazards of transformative reading and religious conversion to hospitality, affective calculation, and the madness of decision.
Winter 2013
ENGL 165MT | Topics in Literature: Material Text in Early Modern England (Undergraduate)
When we pick up a piece of literature, we tend not to think about the complex material conditions through which that literature becomes available to us. These conditions, however, can have a significant impact on the way we understand the literature of any given period. This course will examine those conditions for the early modern period. In doing so, we will discuss manuscript circulation of literature, print and the commercial book market, conditions of authorship, and the various transformations literature undergoes before it becomes available to us as modern readers and students.
Spring 2013
ENGL 65GL | Topics in Literature: The Good Life (Undergraduate)
Good friends, good food, good conversation: these are some of the things that make up “The Good Life” in the work of many poets in the mid-seventeenth century, including several living through the English civil wars. This course will explore the ideal of the “good life” as developed by English poets such as Ben Jonson, Robert Herrick, Richard Lovelace, Andrew Marvell, and more. It will also explore the ways writers used the ideal of the good life to cope with bad times and contest the political enemies during the English civil war.
ENGL 165EM | Topics in Literature: Cities and Literature: London and Boston in the 17th and 18th centuries (Undergraduate)
This course will investigate the relationship between, on the one hand, historically distinct forms of literature, and, on the other, the production of space into the lived places between the 16th and 18th century. Among our chief lines of investigation will be: How do distinct spaces and performances of literature (whether aural and silent) mediate each other? Can we understand literature, whether written or spoken, as vibrant matter that thrives within the ecological niche provided by the early modern city and town? Just how are the distinct genres and forms of literature (drama, poetry, non-fiction narrative, novel) shaped to urban spaces so they can proliferate as private and public entertainment? What sort of audience practices and experiences do they afford? Our course readings will range from two popular non-Shakespearean city comedies (Ben Jonson’s Epicene {1600} and Thomas Dekker’s The Shoe-maker’s Holiday {1609}); Defoe’s account of London’s response a health catastrophe in Journal of the Plague Year {1722}; the literary work needed to envision and execute the plantation of New England by the first Puritans (John Winthrop, Increase Mather, Ann Bradstreet, Ann Hutchinson), as well as Hawthorne’s classic account of the costs and contradictions of that project in the The Scarlett Letter {1850}. We will draw freely on maps and poetry to deepen our understanding of urban place and literary tropes. Course assignments include one short 2-page essay (a close reading of a literary text), a “media remix performance” at the end of the term, and a final paper related to that performance. Note: This course will be co-taught with Renaissance scholar and EMC Fellow, Christopher Foley.
ENGL 197 | Upper-Division Seminar: Literature of Boston, 1630-1850 (Undergraduate)
This course will investigate the relationship between, on the one hand, historically distinct forms of literature, and, on the other, the production of space into the lived places (streets, wharfs, buildings) of Boston between the founding and 1850. Among our chief lines of investigation will be: How do distinct spaces the aural and silent performances of literature mediate one another? Can we understand literature, whether written or spoken, as vibrant matter that thrives within the ecological niche provided by the early modern town, thriving 18th century port, or great the 19th century city? What sort of audience practices and experiences does this literature afford? Our course readings will range from the literature of the founding of New England (John Winthrop, Increase Mather, Ann Bradstreet), to the contradictions between the religious and economic freedom the Puritans sought and the intolerance and punishments that they sometimes inflicted (Ann Hutchinson, Mary Dyer, Roger Williams and the Native American critique of the new settlements). The Native American rejection of the English settler invaders becomes violent with King Philips War, which kills one in every 10 English settler (Mary Rowlandson’s captivity narrative). We will take account of Boston’s emergence in the 18th century as a town of wealth, power and self-confidence, by studying Samuel Adam’s written and oral leadership of Boston’s vigorous opposition to British colonial rule, which culminates in the American Revolution. Finally the second part of the course will focus upon two classic rewritings of Boston as puritan settlement {Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlett Letter {1850}) and the Boston suburb of Concord as a place of nature (Henry David Thoreau’s Walden {1854}). Course assignments include quizzes on reading, one seminar presentation (with 2-page essay), and a final 7-page research paper.