2018-2019 Material Witness sessions

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Below are the descriptions for the [Material Witness] sessions that took place during the 2018–2019 academic year. These include the fellow who curated the session as well as the list of items that were displayed.

January 24, 2018 - "Ties that Bind: Contracting Labour in Early Modern England

This session focuses on the material traces of, and the tensions within, early modern attempts to contract service. How were the materiality and legality of labor and service contracts articulated and manifested? How and to what extent were these documents enforceable? Curated by Folger-Mellon Long-term Fellow, Urvashi Chakravarty (George Mason University), this session examines a range of legal instruments and ‘informal’ documents—including English apprenticeship indentures, Atlantic contracts for indentured servitude, printed books and manuscript letters—to explore the ways in which early modern material culture reflected and re-framed the fictions of consent that underwrote the performance of labor and service.

Materials Displayed:

X.d.515 (7): Lease for Nathaniel and Joane Carter