Whose Sovereignty? (undergraduate colloquy)

Whose Sovereignty?

A semester-length, combined-mode colloquy for undergraduates directed by Urvashi Chakravarty (University of Toronto) during Spring 2025

This ten-week colloquy for undergraduate students explored the topic of consent and sovereignty in conversation with the Folger’s 2024­­–2025 theme, “Whose Democracy?”. Twelve participants examined problems of power and authority as they relate to different overlapping spheres of consent, including political, sexual, social, and economic consent. Students read both early modern and contemporary sources and discussed them with invited guests: Scott Manning Stevens, Patricia Matthews, Misha Ewen, and Carissa Harris. Throughout the colloquy, participants learned about the Folger’s special collections materials and public-facing resources, spoke with curators and practitioners, and concluded the program with an in-person visit to the Folger. In lieu of a seminar paper, participants individually or collectively undertook a public-facing project to share their findings and insights. This aligns with efforts at the Folger to communicate scholarly discoveries with wider audiences.

Director:

Urvashi Chakravarty, Associate Professor of English at the University of Toronto, works on early modern English literature, critical race studies, queer studies, and slavery and servitude in early modern England and the Atlantic world. Author of Fictions of Consent: Slavery, Servitude, and Free Service in Early Modern England (University of Pennsylvania, 2022), which won the Shakespeare Association of America’s First Book Award and the Phyllis Goodhart Gordan Prize granted by the Renaissance Society of America, she is currently at work on a second book, tentatively titled Racial Futurity: Family, Slavery, and the Invention of White Womanhood in Early Modernity.

Inaugural Cohort:

Allison Blair, Sophomore – English, Carnegie Mellon University

Matthew Freeman, Senior – History, University of Rochester

Cameron Hart, Sophomore – English, Emory University

Irene Herrmann, Sophomore – History, Washington University in St. Louis

Kelly Hicks, Senior – English, History and Medieval Cultures, Brown University

Halima Jama, Senior – English, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

McKenzie Knight, Sophomore – English, University of Alabama

Richard Lu, Senior – English, The Pennsylvania State University

Erin Reed, Senior – English Language and Literature, University of South Carolina

Brennan Selcz, Junior – English and Political Science, North Carolina State University

Autumn Simundson, Sophomore – English, Texas A&M University

Tyne Vainio, Junior – English and History, University of Toronto

All affiliations and class years are as of Spring 2025.