The Early Modern Center at UCSB mobilizes the English department's strength in sixteenth- through eighteenth-century studies, which is maintained by nine faculty in the field. The Center provides a specially-constructed space (consisting of a seminar area, resource library, and networked computers) that promotes collaborative research and teaching. State-of-the-art computing equipment is supported by the latest databases in the field, including the Early English Books Online (EEBO), consisting of all extant books published in England from 1475-1700, and the Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO), 1701-1800. The Center creates courses around innovative annual themes; supervises the department's undergraduate specialization in Early Modern Studies; organizes colloquia and conferences; produces an online gallery of images and an archive of internet resources; maintains a bookshelf of rare books in its library and critical reviews on its website; and offers a graduate student assistantship each year.
The EMC is proud to announce that it has won a 2nd National Endowment for the Humanities Grant of $350,000 for 2008-2010 to expand its online English Broadside Ballads Archive to include the Roxburghe Ballads held by the British Library. EBBA is currently nearing completion of its digitization of the Pepys Ballads held by Magdalene College, Cambridge, which was also funded by an NEH grant (for 2006-2008). Congratulations ballad team! For the award proposals, see NEH1: Reference Materials Grant Proposal and NEH2: Collections and Resources Grant Proposal.
2008-2009 Annual Theme: Before Environmentalism
When confronted with the description of a literal dark cloud of air pollution hanging over Coketown in Dickens’s novel Hard Times, many readers are immediately persuaded not only that our current environmental crisis has its roots in the 19th century, but that it was clearly making its appearance in the literature of the day. However, turn the clock back two centuries, to Milton or the 18th century novel, and many of the same readers are remarkably resistant to the notion that the roots of the crisis could possibly reach back so far--at least with respect to such "modern" environmental problems as industrial air pollution. Nonetheless, air pollution, toxic waste, increased urbanization, deforestation, wetland loss, radical changes in land use, and a host of similar environmental issues were surprisingly timely ones in Early Modern England, routinely making their appearance in the literature from 1500-1800. Indeed, by the time Milton was writing Paradise Lost it was already known that respiratory illness from urban air pollution was second only to the Plague as the leading cause of death in London. The 2008-2009 EMC Theme, "Before Environmentalism," will provide a forum to explore the early modern literary and cultural response to these environmental issues, which gave shape to modern environmentalism.
Each year the Early Modern Center and its affiliates organize a number of exciting courses and events around the yearly theme. Several early modern graduate and undergraduate courses will also be in dialogue with the year’s theme. In addition, the EMC will host a Fall Colloquium, a Winter conference, and the Bliss-Zimmerman Seminar in the Spring--all on the theme "Before Environmentalism." Speakers will include Jill Casid, Angus Fletcher, Carolyn Merchant, Beth Fowkes Tobin, and Robert N. Watson.
Please visit our "Before Environmentalism" 2009 conference website here.
EMC Gallery
The Early Modern Center Gallery is a featured resource of the center, containing reproductions of many important period images in thumbnail, browser, and large high-quality sizes. A random image from the Gallery is sampled below.
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| Cathay Manor, Great Chamber. , . Cathay Manor, Somerset |