Monograph, Technologies of Transport: Domestic Travel Writing in Early Modern England, 1600-1660
Technologies of Transport explores the reciprocal relationship between forms of writing and forms of travel in seventeenth-century England. I turn to a range of understudied travelers (e.g. Lady Isabella Twysden, Anthony Wood, John Norden, William Kemp, John Taylor, Ben Jonson), their practices of mobility (everyday and exceptional, actual and imagined), and their forms of writing (narrative account, marginal notation, numeric table, map) to offer a new literary history of early modern travel which reanimates the remarkable diversity of representational modalities at play in the seventeenth century. I argue that travelers’ engagements with distinct textual forms paralleled their engagements with forms of movement (walking, coach rides, horseback, etc.). How they marked their mobility—wrote, remembered, reflected—tells us something about how they conceived of a travel experience. By extension, literary forms, discourses, and paradigms also imprinted themselves on the minds of travelers, guiding and shaping subsequent travel acts and spatial thinking. It is a contention of this book that “travel thinking” was felt and forged in the early modern period, perhaps most fervently, at home.
"Labyrinths & Domestic Travel in Early Modern England"
This paper examines the labyrinth as a mechanism for reading early modern travel. The concentric pathways have both ancient and medieval precedents that highlight their connection to travel knowledge, vicarious pilgrimage, and imagined geographies, most notably in the floors of thirteenth-century cathedrals throughout Europe. In medieval and early modern England, however, the record is somewhat different. Rather than architectural traces, labyrinths and mazes (as they are sometimes misleadingly called) leave their mark in the natural landscape--turf labyrinths, hedge mazes, and gardens--and, most surprisingly, in an anonymous turn of the seventeenth-century broadsheet which presents "the cheiffest Citties, and Townes, as they ly from London [sic]" in a circular arrangement highly evocative of design and purpose of cathedral labyrinths. The labyrinth, I suggest, pervades as a system, both practiced and imagined, for experiencing, knowing, and directing mobility throughout the seventeenth century.
LibreText: Digital Critical Editions of Early Modern Texts
This project features collaborative and student-authored digital critical editions of three works of early modern literature: John Foxe's Acts and Monuments (more popularly known as the Book of Martyrs), Thomas More's Utopia, and William Shakespeare's Macbeth. Students enrolled in Colloquium III: Early Modern Literature worked together to produce student-friendly editions of works they studied in class, which were then edited and developed by student research assistants. Each text showcases an introduction to the work, cultural context essays, annotations of the primary text, and more. In so doing, we aim to advance the aim of LibreText, which is to increase access to educational resources for students. Project funded by the Department of Education (Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education).
Refuge(es): Telling the Story of Global Displacement in the Archives of the Sisters of the Holy Cross
The central aim of this project is to digitize and share archival material held by the Congregational Archives and Records of the Sisters of the Holy Cross (founders of Saint Mary's College) related to the sisters' close work with refugees and displaced persons during the American Civil War (1861-65) and the refugee crises in Cambodia (1979-80), Lebanon (1982-83), and El Salvador (1983-86). This highly collaborative project includes faculty, student research assistants, community partners, and more, and it seeks to encourage community discussion on appropriate and viable responses to the ongoing mass displacement of populations worldwide. Project funded by the Consortium for Independent Colleges (Humanities Research for the Public Good grant) and the Mellon Foundation.
"Moved by God: Mobility and Spiritual Agency in Anna Trapnel's Report and Plea," Renaissance Studies, "Renaissance and Early Modern Travel: Practice and Experience, 1500-1700," 33.4 (September 2019).
“Lady Anne Clifford’s ‘Way’ and Aristocratic Women’s Travel,” Traveling/Travailing Women: Early Modern England and the Wider World. Edited by Bernadette Andrea and Patricia Akhimie. University of Nebraska Press (November 2018).
“The Afterlife of Ben Jonson’s Foot Voyage,” Renaissance Society of America, New Orleans, Louisiana (March 2018)
"Crossing and Communications in Shakespeare's England." The Cambridge Guide to the Worlds of Shakespeare. Edited by Bruce R. Smith and Katherine Rowe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2016).
“The Device of Travel: Technology, Mobility, and Performance (or, 17th-century hybrid high-performance vehicles),” Shakespeare Association of America, Vancouver, Canada (April 2015)
“The ‘rude mechanicals’ of travel: Motion, machination, and performance in Ben Jonson’s foot voyage,” Shakespeare Association of America, St. Louis, Missouri (April 2014)
“Travel in Time: Local Travel and Seventeenth-Century English Almanacs,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. 43.2 (Spring 2013): 419-43.