Neighborhood, Community, and Place in Early Modern London (seminar)

Fall 2020 Online Seminar directed by Christopher Highley and Alan Farmer in partnership with The Ohio State University

Cole, B. (Benjamin), printmaker. [London gates] Ald-gate, Bishops-Gate, Moore-Gate, Cripple-Gate, Alders-Gate, New-Gate, Lud-Gate, the Bridge-Gate [graphic]. ART File L847m1 no.1 (size M)

This interdisciplinary seminar invites scholars working on the metropolis of London from roughly 1450 through 1750 to reflect on existing scholarship and to explore how new approaches might enrich and deepen our understanding of key concepts like “neighborhood,” “community,” and “place.” Drawing on online resources like the Map of Early Modern London (MoEML), the seminar plans to combine case studies of particular spaces and places—including parishes and streets, as well as bookstores, printing houses, company halls, prisons, and others suggested by participants—with discussions of methodology. The goal is to open up a number of theoretical questions with examples drawn from current research: What do literary and social historians mean by neighborhood and community? Are neighborhoods defined solely by official territorial subdivisions like parishes, precincts, and wards, or are they more elastic, improvised, imagined, and performed? And what is the relation between neighborhood and community in early modern London? Is the latter always tied to a particular place or is it a non-spatialized construct?

On Saturday, October 3, the Folger Institute welcomes anyone interested to join the participants of "Neighborhood, Community, and Place in Early Modern London" for an open session. This interactive session will allow participants to take part in a general discussion and ask questions related to the spatial turn in “London studies.” Learn more about where this topic currently stands and what discoveries will push the field in new directions.

The session will run from 3:30 to 4:30 Eastern Time. If you are interested, please send a request to institute@folger.edu.

Directors

Christopher Highley teaches in the English department and directs the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at the Ohio State University.  He is finishing a book called Blackfriars: Theater, Church, and Neighborhood in Early Modern London, and leading a parish project for 'The Map of Early Modern London.' Alan B. Farmer is an Associate Professor of English at the Ohio State University. He has published extensively on the publication of early modern playbooks. He is the co-editor, with Adam Zucker, of Localizing Caroline Drama: Politics and Economics of the Early Modern English Stage, 1625–1642 (2006), and the co-creator, with Zachary Lesser, of DEEP: Database of Early English Playbooks. His current book project is on popularity in the early modern English book trade and includes an investigation of the cultural geography of bookselling in early modern London.

Schedule

Friday and Saturday, 2 – 3 October 2020. Participants were asked to pre-circulate short papers and the co-directors arranged them into the following discussion groups (all affiliations and ranks current at time of seminar).

Sessions

Rethinking Parishes, Neighborhoods, and Communities

Ian Archer, Associate Professor – History, University of Oxford

Paul Griffiths, Professor – History, Iowa State University

Mark Jenner, Professor – History, University of York

Charlie Taverner, Postdoctoral Fellow –  Economic History, Institute of Historical Research, University of London

Social Places and Problems

Justin Colson, Professor – History, University of Essex

Aaron Columbus, PhD Candidate – History, Classics and  Archaeology, Birkbeck College, University of London

Tim Reinke-Williams, Senior Lecturer – History, University of Northampton

Joseph Ward, Professor – History, Utah State University

Religious Spaces and Communities

Becky Friedman, PhD Candidate – English, University of Massachusetts,  Amherst

Arnold Hunt, Lecturer – History, University of Cambridge

Kathleen Lynch, Executive Director – Folger Institute, Folger Shakespeare Library

John N. Wall, Professor – English, North Carolina State University

Textual Communities

Vanessa Harding, Professor – History, Classics, and Archaeology, Birkbeck College, University of London

Hannah Lilley, Postdoctoral Fellow – History, University of Birmingham

Duncan Salkeld, Professor Emeritus -- Shakespeare and Renaissance History, University of Chichester

Erica Zimmer, Lecturer – History and Literature, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Playing Precincts

Callan Davies, Postdoctoral Fellow – English, University of Kent

Tracey Hill, Professor – English, Bath Spa University

Christopher Matusiak, Associate Professor – English, Ithaca College

Alan H. Nelson, Professor Emeritus – English, University of California, Berkeley

Resources

Video capture of public session which concluded the seminar