This series presents studies of the early modern contacts and exchanges among the states, polities and entrepreneurial organizations of Europe; Asia, including the Levant and East India/Indies; Africa; and the Americas. Books investigate travellers, merchants and cultural inventors, including explorers, mapmakers, artists and writers, as they operated in political, mercantile, sexual and linguistic economies. We encourage authors to reflect on their own methodologies in relation to issues and theories relevant to the study of transculturism/translation and transnationalism. We are particularly interested in work on and from the perspective of the Asians, Africans, and Americans involved in these interactions, and on such topics as:
-Material exchanges, including textiles, paper and printing, and technologies of knowledge
-Movements of bodies: embassies, voyagers, piracy, enslavement
-Travel writing: its purposes, practices, forms and effects on writing in other genres
-Belief systems: religions, philosophies, sciences
-Translations: verbal, artistic, philosophical
-Forms of transnational violence and its representations.
By Erith Jaffe-Berg
March 18, 2016
Drawing on published collections and also manuscripts from Mantuan archives, Commedia dell' arte and the Mediterranean locates commedia dell' arte as a performance form reflective of its cultural crucible in the Mediterranean. The study provides a broad perspective on commedia dell’ arte as an ...
By Helen Hackett
January 13, 2016
Marcus Gheeraerts’s portrait of a ’Persian lady’ - probably in fact an English lady in masquing costume - exemplifies the hybridity of early modern English culture. Her surrounding landscape and the embroidery on her gown are typically English; but her head-dress and slippers are decidedly exotic, ...
By Karim Bejjit
July 10, 2015
Recent years have seen growing academic interest in England’s colonial venture in Tangier in the late seventeenth century, and the crucial role it played not only in influencing contemporary domestic politics in England, but also in shaping new imperial policies in the Mediterranean. This critical ...
By Mingjun Lu
September 11, 2015
The Chinese Impact upon English Renaissance Literature examines how English writers responded to the cultural shock caused by the first substantial encounter between China and Western Europe. Author Mingjun Lu explores how Donne and Milton came to be aware of England’s participation in ’the race ...
By Brian Brazeau
October 28, 2009
The focus of this study is the exciting period of French overseas exploration directly following the stagnation caused by the Wars of Religion. The book examines the early period of French involvement in Northeastern America through readings of key texts, principally travel and missionary accounts...