EMWorkshop Program 2025/2026

Fall 2025

Wednesday, September 10, 2025, 5-7 PM
Harvard Early Modern World and Harvard Early Modern Workshop
Harvard Early Modern World Fall Aperitivo 

The aperitivo features faculty flashtalks:

  • Janet Gyatso (Harvard Divinity School): Tipping to the Empirical: Traditional Medicine in Early Modern Buddhist Tibet
  • Joseph Koerner (History of Art and Architecture, Harvard): “Death Dances.”
  • Jinu Choi (Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for History and Economics, Harvard), “Are we there yet? Ship decks as sites of knowledge-making on European transoceanic voyages”
  • Molly Schwartzburg (Houghton Library, Harvard): “Pigment analysis in two Houghton Library incunables”

Location: History Department Conference Room, Robinson Hall, Harvard Yard, Cambridge MA 02138, followed by a reception.  

 

Monday, September 15, 5:15-7:30 PM
Opening Event of the Mahindra Humanities Center Seminar in History of the Book 

The Opening Event features

  • Eric Gurevitch (History of Science, Harvard): Two inscriptions, three tables of contents, and one cannon: Artisanal literacy in precolonial South Asia
  • Ann Blair (History, Harvard): The appeal of composite volumes among early European imprints
  • Spence Weinreich (Society of Fellows, Harvard): The Jailer's Key, the Prisoner's Code
  • Paul Russell (Celtic Languages and Literatures, Harvard): Gerald of Wales, Edward Lhuyd and some 'Welsh scribbles'.

Location: Barker Center 133, 12 Quincy St, Harvard University, Cambridge , followed by a reception.

 

Tuesday, September 16, 2025, 5 PM
Early Modern Workshop in the History Department, Harvard University
Lecture, "A woman doing her accounts: some lessons from a peripatetic early modern porcelain"
Dror Wahrman, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Location: Basement Seminar Room, Robinson Hall, Harvard Yard, Cambridge MA

 

Wednesday, October 15, 5:15-6:45 PM
Mahindra Humanities Center Seminars in History of the Book and Rethinking Translation, Harvard University
Lecture, "Translations of Greek poetry in the Renaissance: discourse, commerce, canon"
Nathaniel Hess, Warburg Institute
Location: Harvard Dana Palmer House Seminar Room, 16 Quincy St, Cambridge MA

 

Tuesday, October 21, 2025, 5-7 PM
Early Modern Workshop in the History Department, Harvard University, and English Department Renaissance Colloquium
Lecture, “The Mask of Battle: Chivalry and the Racial Imagination”
Alexander Bevilacqua, Williams College
Location: Basement Seminar Room, Harvard History Department, Robinson Hall, Harvard Yard, Cambridge MA

 

Tuesdays October 28, November 4, November 11 at 5:30 PM
The 2025 Erasmus Lectures in the History and Civilization of The Netherlands and Flanders, sponsored by the Erasmus Lectureship in the History and Civilization of The Netherlands and Flanders and the Early Modern Workshop in the Department of History, Harvard University 

Three Lectures on “The Early Modern Making of the Refugee” (October 28: “Inventing Refugee Identities”; November 4: “Agents of Humanitarianism”; November 11: “Pillars of the Dutch Empire”) 

Tuesday, October 28, 2025, 5:30 PM
Lecture, “The Early Modern Making of the Refugee: Inventing Refugee Identities”
Speaker: Geert Janssen, University of Amsterdam
Location: Basement Seminar Room, Robinson Hall, Harvard Yard, Cambridge MA, followed by a reception. 

Refugees have existed since antiquity, yet it was in the early modern era that they first emerged as a clearly defined social category. This lecture investigates when, where, and why certain migrant groups began to describe themselves as ‘refugees’, and shows how the war-ridden Low Countries became an unlikely crucible for the formation of refugee identities. It also considers the unintended consequences of this discursive invention - particularly for displaced communities that failed to meet its confessionalized criteria. 

Tuesday November 4, 5:30pm
Lecture: “The Early Modern Making of the Refugee: Agents of Humanitarianism”
Speaker: Geert Janssen, University of Amsterdam
Location: Basement Seminar Room, Robinson Hall, Harvard Yard, Cambridge MA, followed by a reception. 

The growing numbers of displaced minorities in early modern Europe coincided with the rise of support groups that advocated refugee protection, coordinated charitable relief, and shaped public discourse through emerging media. This lecture situates the Dutch Republic at the heart of these transnational solidarity networks, assessing the agency of religious minorities and other stakeholders. In doing so, it interrogates the connections between early modern practices of refugee aid and the development of modern humanitarian cultures. 

Tuesday November 11, 2025, 5:30 PM
Lecture: “The Early Modern Making of the Refugee: Pillars of the Dutch Empire”
Speaker: Geert Janssen, University of Amsterdam
Location: Basement Seminar Room, Robinson Hall, Harvard Yard, Cambridge MA, followed by a reception. 

Historians have often portrayed refugees as marginalized victims of modernizing states, yet in the early modern world they also played a formative role in building those very states. This lecture argues that the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic depended heavily on displaced minorities to advance its military, maritime, and colonial ambitions. By examining the reciprocal relationship between governments and dispersed communities, it reveals how the recognition of refugee status could serve both confessional regimes and imperial expansion.