Early Modern World
Early Modern World at Harvard is a multi-disciplinary group composed of faculty, graduate students, and visiting researchers who study the historical traditions of early modernity across the globe. “Early Modern” refers to the dynamic period of cultural exchange within and between different regions of the world from the 14th to the 18th centuries. The complex legacy of the Early Modern era in Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Europe—a period of political change, movement of peoples and colonization, scientific and technological discovery, and artistic innovation—continues to shape the present day. As research and teaching in these fields becomes increasingly diverse and global, this group fosters inclusivity, connection, and collaboration among Harvard’s community of early modernists.
EMW is Harvard’s central hub for early modern activities of all kinds. It serves scholars, librarians, archivists, curators, and digital specialists working across departments and units, recognizing shared goals and fostering opportunities for collaboration in research, teaching, and public engagement. We maintain a coordinated list of lectures, workshops, seminars, and events hosted by affiliated groups and programs. We publish course offerings and promote awareness of the activities of our community members. We run two mailing lists—one newsletter for Harvard-based early modern events and one for events in the broader New England area. We welcome your input as we work to support ongoing and emerging projects in early modern fields across the university. If you would like to join one or both of our mailing lists, please write to our Program Coordinator, Anja Goeing, at agoeing@fas.harvard.edu. Welcome to Early Modern World at Harvard!
Past Spring 2025: Visiting Professor Joe Moshenska (Oxford)
Upcoming Events
Harvard Early Modern World Fall Aperitivo
Sponsor: Harvard Early Modern World initiative and Harvard Renaissance Colloquium
Faculty Flash-talks:
Cécile Fromont (HAA)
Nathan Perl-Rosenthal (Center for European Studies)
Jennifer Oliver (RLL)
Robert Darnton (History)
Lewys Glyn Cothi: revisiting the manuscripts of a Welsh pencerdd
Sponsor: Mahindra Humanities Center Seminar on Celtic Literature and Culture
Speaker: Gruffudd Antur, University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies in Aberystwyth
Jews in Old Rus’: A Documentary History
Seminar in Ukrainian Studies Public Event Series
Sponsors: Center for Jewish Studies and the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute (HURI)
Speakers: Alexander Kulik, Professor in the Department of Russian and East European Studies at the Hebrew University of...
Learning to Talk Shop: Mercantile Mischief and Popular Pedagogy in Premodern England (Book Talk)
Speaker: Susan Phillips (Northwestern University)
Sponsors: English Medieval Colloquium, the Medieval History Graduate Workshop, the English Renaissance Colloquium, the Committee on Medieval Studies, the Department of English, and the Department of History...
White Ethiopian Girls haunting the Western Renaissance and Baroque Imagination
Sponsor: Hiphop Archive & Research Institute at the Hutchins Center
Speaker: Jean-Frederic Schaub, EHESS Paris
This lecture is part of the W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute Weekly Colloquium Series
Book Talk on Performing Enlightenment: Buddhism and Theater in Early Modern China
Sponsor: Asia Center Author Book Talk Series, co-sponsored by the Harvard-Yenching Insitute and the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University
Author: Mengxiao Wang, Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of...
Letters from the Augsburg Collegium Medicum and German Physicians / Practicing Healers
Sponsor: Harvard Early Sciences Working Group
Speaker: Courtney Greer-Soliday (G3 PhD, History of Science)
![Ch'ŏnhado. [Korea] :: [publisher not identified],, 1630. (World map, Harvard Libraries)](/sites/g/files/omnuum9471/files/styles/hwp_16_9__960x540/public/2025-09/Screenshot%202025-09-04%20at%206.35.58%E2%80%AFAM.png?itok=nFqQTtcK)
Writing into Nothingness
Sponsor: Mahindra Humanities Center Seminar on France and the World
Speaker: Joanna Stalnaker, Columbia University
Colossal Engineering in Carioca
Sponsor: Mahindra Humanities Center Seminar on Visual Representation, Materiality, and Medium
Speaker: Erika Naginski, Harvard Graduate School of Design
Race, Slavery, and Transatlantic Scribal Politics
Sponsor: Harvard Mahindra Humanities Center Seminar on Eighteenth Century Studies
Speakers: A. Veronique Charles, Columbia University; Fauve Vandenberghe, Harvard University/University of Ghent
Audition Call: ὕδραυλις – Performing Medieval and Early Modern Music from Historical Notation at Harvard University
Tuesday and Wednesday, September 29 and 30 5:00PM - 7:00PM EDT
Sponsor: St. Paul's Church/Harvard Catholic Forum
Type of event: Educational, with a weekly Vespers program on Wednesdays at 5PM: Medieval and Renaissance Music at Harvard University *ὕδραυλις
Ar...
Richard Burbage’s Henry V: Collaboration and Rethinking Dramatic Authorship
Sponsor: Harvard Mahindra Humanities Center Seminar on Shakespearean Studies
Speaker: Tanya Pollard, Brooklyn College and CUNY
A Conversation on Petrarch’s "Canzoniere: A New Translation"
Sponsor: Harvard Mahindra Humanities Center public event
Speakers: Andrew Frisardi, A.M. Juster, and Kate van Orden
Moderator: Ramie Targoff
The Book of Job in the Republic of Letters: The Reception of Hugo Grotius's Annotata ad Vetus Testamentum (1644)
Sponsors: Mahindra Humanities Center Seminar in the History of the Book and Early Modern Workshop in the Department of History, Harvard University.
Speaker: Michael Legaspi (St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary). Comment: Gabriel Parlin (Committee...
George Herbert and the Heresy of Paraphrase
Sponsor: Harvard English Department Renaissance Colloquium
Speaker: Gabriel Bloomfield (Smith College)
Locanadarpaṇamu (A Mirror for the Eyes)
Sponsor: Harvard Early Sciences Working Group
Speaker: Sri Sathvik Rayala (G1 PhD, History of Science)
Palimpsests Past and Present: The Sufis and Sultans of the Maklī Necropolis, 1380–1660
Sponsor: Fall 2026 AKPIA Lecture Series: A Forum for Islamic Art & Architecture
Speaker: Fatima Quraishi, Assistant Professor, Art and Archaeology, Princeton University
Scytale: A Historical Analysis of Cryptography, Military Intelligence, and Military Science: Ancient Secrets, Messages, and Sensitivity
Sponsor: Harvard Early Sciences Working Group
Speaker: Xiao Di "Janice" Tong (H-Net Reviews Editor)
High Stakes, Big Data: The Existential Entanglements of the Abbasid Nilometer in Cairo
Sponsor: Fall 2026 AKPIA Lecture Series: A Forum for Islamic Art & Architecture
Speaker: Heba Mostafa, Associate Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture, Department of Art History, St. George, University of Toronto
What is Sacred about Emotions? A Historical Exploration of Emotion in Hasidism
Sponsor: Harvard Mahindra Humanities Seminar on Jewish Cultures and Societies
Speaker: Leore Sachs Shmueli, Bar Ilan University
A Cooler Art History of European Landscape
Sponsor: Harvard Early Sciences Working Group
Speaker: Kirsten Burke (Junior Fellow, Harvard Society of Fellows)
Hamlet’s "Garbage" and the Tragedy of Waste
Sponsors: Harvard Mahindra Humanities Center Seminar on Shakespearean Studies and Harvard English Department Renaissance Colloquium
Speaker: Matthew Ritger, Dartmouth College
A Closer Look at the Crespi Chronicle: An Illustrated History of Mankind in the Early Renaissance
Speaker: Paolo Sachet (Sapienza University of Rome and Institut d’Histoire de la Réformation, University of Geneva)
Sponsors: Mahindra Humanities Center Seminar in the History of the Book and Early Modern Workshop in the Department of History, Harvard...
Book Discussion: "Antiquity Made Whole: The Renaissance Continuation of Ancient Literature"
Author: Leah Whittington (English, Harvard). Respondents: Gordon Teskey (English, Harvard), Eric Weiskott (English, Boston College), Megan Heffernan (English, DePaul) and Stephen Hinds (Classics, University of Washington, Seattle). Co-sponsored by the...
The Earth Turned Inside Out: Sino-European Exchange and the Cross-cultural History of Early Modern Seismology
Sponsor: Harvard Early Sciences Working Group
Speaker: Seongun Park (G7 PhD, East Asian Languages and Civilizations)
Entangled with the River: The Making of Safavid Isfahan from Watershed to Body
Sponsor: Fall 2026 AKPIA Lecture Series: A Forum for Islamic Art & Architecture
Speaker: Sahar Hosseini, Assistant Professor, Department of History of Art and Architecture, University of Pittsburgh
Graduate Student Talks: Jude Willoughby and Sean Coomey (both Harvard English)
Sponsor: Renaissance Colloquium, English Department, Harvard University
Electrical Narratives: Visual Art, Rape, Race, and Religion in Hester Pulter’s The Unfortunate Florinda and Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece
Speaker: Erika Boeckeler, Northeastern University
Sponsors: Mahindra Humanities Center Seminar on Shakespearean Studies and Renaissance Colloquium, English Department, Harvard University