Brett Rushforth

@brettrushforth

Early modern historian of the Atlantic world, Indigenous Americas, Western Africa, France. Editor, Huntington Library Quarterly. brettrushforth.com

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Brett Rushforth@brettrushforth· 9d

muse.jhu.edu/article/996868

Joanne E. Myers, "Community, Devotion, and Collective Authorship in Seventeenth-Century Convents: Two Poems from the Poor Clares Archive"

This article presents two poems from the early modern archive of the English Poor Clares, one unpublished since the seventeenth century, the other found until now only in manuscript. Although devotional poetry might seem a privileged genre for understanding individual nuns’ spiritual experience, I argue instead that, when we consider the poems’ multiple appearances in the nuns’ prayer books, they are better understood as a communal devotional resource for shaping a collective identity. Tracing scribes’ recycling of these texts across the archive provides insight into how cloistered women sustained their vocation and how the convent’s textual culture supported modes of subjectivity and authorship that differ from those emergent in modernity.

Brett Rushforth@brettrushforth· 9d

muse.jhu.edu/article/996867

Theresa Brock, "Marvelous Creatures or Monstrous Beasts?"
Abstract: This study examines André Thevet's Cosmographie universelle(Universal Cosmography, 1575) and Jean de Léry's Histoire d'un voyage fait en la terre du Bresil (History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil, 1578) to meet two objectives. First, the study shows how confession-specific concepts and practices, including around the Eucharist, influence how each writer views animals. Second, the analysis brings French texts more squarely into the scholarly conversation on confessional attitudes toward animals of the Americas, which has foregrounded Iberian, Dutch, and Danish sources. The study contends that genre and discourses of the monstrous and marvelous support these confessional readings and that intersecting ideological influences either promote or oppose colonization.

Brett Rushforth@brettrushforth· 9d

muse.jhu.edu/article/996939

Jack Avery, "Courting the Captain: Poetry in the Journals of Seventeenth-Century English Mariners"

ABSTRACT: This article examines original and quoted poetry in journals written by four English mariners to argue that they provide exceptional insight into shipboard reading and writing practices during the late seventeenth century. Maritime poetry was marked by a continual process of reinvention, both in its initial composition and circulation, and in its subsequent inscription within broader journal narratives. These manuscripts must therefore be approached carefully by criticism, for while they record the motivations and techniques of verse writing on board ship, including its enmeshment within the complex patronage systems of the vessel, mariners only compiled their materials together later to achieve fresh objectives. Their poetry was marked by a rich and imaginative variety and reinvented the familiar conventions of landed literature to better fit conditions at sea. Prior scholarship has focused on how mariners emphasized their own labor, but this article maintains that their adaptation of popular literary forms often downplayed that element to prioritize alternative paradigms, including providential and heroic narratives. Maritime writers did not mask these transformations but expected their readers to recognize and value them for their ability to simultaneously convey the rhetoric and reality of life at sea.

Brett Rushforth@brettrushforth· 9d

muse.jhu.edu/article/996866

Amrita Dhar, "The Case of Eyes: Two Blindnesses on the Shakespearean Stage"
ABSTRACT: This essay studies two blindnesses on the Shakespearean stage: the feigned blindness in 2 Henry VI and the violently inflicted blindness in King Lear. Through a reading of these blindness episodes using insights from premodern critical disability studies, this essay demonstrates that blindness on the Shakespearean stage functions to denote the limits of vision, intellection, and even justice. The appearance of blindness on the Shakespearean stage works to interrogate the very nature of theatricality. The staging of blindness equally provides readers, viewers, and audiences ways of rethinking the equation between vision and intellection that was prevalent in Shakespeare’s day and persists into our own.

Brett Rushforth@brettrushforth· 9d

muse.jhu.edu/article/996865

Annalisa Nicholson, "Interrogating Women’s Libertinism through the Transnational Worlds of Aphra Behn and Hortense Mancini"
ABSTRACT: In 1689, Aphra Behn dedicated her novella The History of the Nun to the exile and salonnière Hortense Mancini (Duchess of Mazarin). That dedication has attracted the curiosity of scholars, who have pointed to its queer resonances as well as to the novella’s ironic echoes with the paratextual subject, sparking speculation over the relationship between author and dedicatee. Taking this dedication as a starting point, this article revisits the connections between Behn and Mancini, two women associated with deviance, to shed new light on the vexed subject of women’s libertinism in Restoration London. While the misogynist inflections of the libertine movement have led scholars to treat women’s libertinism with suspicion, the double case study of Behn and Mancini reveals how transgressive women in the seventeenth century approached the movement themselves. Lingering on Behn’s novella and her connection to the misogynist verses in “Astrea’s Book for Songs and Satyrs,” the article reads Behn’s dedication alongside one satire to probe how Behn carved out a place for women within libertinism.

Brett Rushforth@brettrushforth· 9d

muse.jhu.edu/article/996864

Eleanor Stephenson, "Layered Erasures: Vere Lynch and the First Painting of English Jamaica"
ABSTRACT: In 1672, Lady Vere Lynch (née Herbert) produced paintings of plantation crops in Jamaica. Lynch’s A Cocoa Tree in the Royal Collection is the first known painting from the English colony of Jamaica and possibly the first by any British woman in the Americas. Drawing on new research conducted in Britain and Jamaica, this essay traces Vere Lynch’s artistic development and connections to the Royal Society, thereby broadening understanding of women at the Stuart court in the art and science of the period. It also examines the layered erasures hidden in the painting and archival trail, from Lynch’s authorship to the obscuring of the enslaved African laborers who planted and tended to Jamaica’s cacao. Vere Lynch’s biography and new attribution illustrate methods for uncovering women artists in colonial archives and disrupts perceptions of seventeenth-century British women artists.

Brett Rushforth@brettrushforth· 15d

Kudos to Elspeth Currie (Boston College) for hosting a great conversation about Beyond the Ocean on New Books Network. She read the whole book and really understood what we were trying to do with it. #EarlyModern #FrenchAtlantic #Skystorians newbooksnetwork.com/beyond-the-o...

Square tile with a watermark image of ships on the sea, superimposed by text reading "In Beyond the Ocean: France and the Atlantic World from the Crusades to the Age of Revolutions (Oxford University Press, 2026), Christopher Hodson and Brett Rushforth reveal the vast and complex world of France's Atlantic enterprises in the premodern era. Drawing upon years of archival work, Hodson and Rushforth demonstrate how France's overseas activities created its empire, intentionally or not, and how these distant places built the French state and used it for their own ends. Beyond the Ocean covers an impressive sweep of history, from the late eleventh century through the early nineteenth, and yet the authors manage to retain a human element. Their judicious inclusion of microhistories and primary-source quotations, as well as their lively prose, helps the reader enter into what it might have felt like to live through these developments, to participate in the era when “France became France, and the Atlantic became a world.” Crucially, their attention to the non-European actors in this story and women’s worlds and work makes the book a helpful corrective to top-down approaches to imperial histories. Beyond the Ocean is a must-read for Atlantic world scholars, but also has value for anyone interested in early modern Europe or cultural exchange.
~Elspeth Currie, New Books Network"

Brett Rushforth@brettrushforth· Jun 29

For the 250th, The Huntington curated an exhibtion called "This Land Is..." The curators--Linde Lehtinen and Josh Garrett-Davis--give a preview in the latest Verso article. www.huntington.org/watch-read-l...

Image of a time-weathered accoustic guitar.

Brett Rushforth@brettrushforth· Jun 14

"In mid-seventeenth-century France, it turned out, female beauty, elite status, and the intertwined growth of Atlantic commerce and racial slavery registered together in all sorts of unusual places." #earlymodern open.substack.com/pub/frenchat...

Brett Rushforth@brettrushforth· Jun 3

"Reversing the damage of the Code Noir demands a better understanding of the widespread and deeply historical French investment in racialized inequality. It also requires a shift in focus from the actions of the French state to the needs of diverse human communities in France’s orbit."

Brett Rushforth@brettrushforth· May 16

On the challenges of writing a book intro. open.substack.com/pub/frenchat...

Image of an antique map superimposed by the words: How not to write an introduction: cutting room floor, Beyond the Ocean, and frenchatlantic.substack.com

Brett Rushforth@brettrushforth· Apr 27

SoCal folks: join us this Friday and Saturday for what promises to be an amazing conference: "Disability and Care in Medieval and Early Modern France." Register here: www.huntington.org/event/disabi... @alanirosa.bsky.social #earlymodern #disabilitystudies

Poster announcing a conference at The Huntington titled "Disability and Care in Medieval and Early Modern France," to be held May 1-2, 2026. The poster features an image of early modern caregivers at a bedside.

Brett Rushforth@brettrushforth· Apr 23

Conference CFP. Early/Modern Connections: Academic and Applied Humanities. Deadline, June 1. #earlymodern

On April 8–9, 2027, The Huntington will host a conference to explore the essential—yet often misunderstood—relationship between specialized academic scholarship and public-serving applied humanities work. Centered on the early modern period (ca. 1400 to 1800), the two-day event will highlight original research that has enabled, supported, or shaped specific public humanities or public interest projects. Like many cultural institutions, The Huntington is actively reflecting on its founding mission “to promote the public welfare,” including how to balance supporting deep, collections-based research with expanding access, engagement, and education for a broader public. This conference offers space to explore how such priorities work in concert.

Beyond asserting that past events apply to our present moment, speakers will demonstrate how they have translated their own scholarship into active public engagement in the form of art, activism, media, site-specific encounters, digital projects, or other collaborative efforts. We anticipate submissions highlighting smaller-scale individual work as well as collaborations between scholars and performers, educators, activists, writers, artists, and public-serving institutions. Collaborative applications should be limited to two participants, due to funding restrictions.

Proposals will be considered for inclusion in the conference, as well as for possible publication in the Huntington Library Quarterly’s new Early/Modern Connections section. For a successful recent example (but only one of many possible approaches), see Amanda Herbert and Kevin Dawson, “Black Aquatics: Early Modern Past, Present, and Future.”

Brett Rushforth@brettrushforth· Mar 31

Featuring my middle-aged attempt to illustrate the complex NPS process in a simple graphic (*made without AI*).

Brett Rushforth@brettrushforth· Mar 31

The story of Ona Judge and the ongoing battle over interpreting history at the Declaration’s quarter-century mark highlight the often-invisible links between public humanities and peer-reviewed academic scholarship. www.huntington.org/verso/undoin...

Image of a museum sign with an artist's rendition of Ona Judge, an enslaved woman who escaped from George and Martha Washington in 1796. The words "I am free now" are visible beneath the image of a ship in Philadelphia's harbor.

Brett Rushforth@brettrushforth· Mar 2

Full book jacket just dropped, and we're pretty happy with it. Huge thanks to @cecilefromont.bsky.social, @soccerpolitics.bsky.social, Alice, and Andrés for your generous words! #earlymodern #BeyondTheOcean global.oup.com/academic/pro...

Image of a book jacket for Beyond the Ocean: France and the Atlantic World from the Crusades to the Age of Revolutions by Christopher Hodson and Brett Rushforth.

Brett Rushforth@brettrushforth· Feb 27

Charles de Rochefort, a Protestant refugee, imagined a Native American utopia called Apalache. Stanwood uncovers the networks of knowledge, rumor, and storytelling that produced this fantastic--but not entirely fictional--place. #earlymodern #hlq

An image with a red banner on top with the text, in white: HLQ | an early modern studies journal. Below is the text: 'The Mysteries of Apalache': Tall Tales and Lost Worlds in the Early American South. Owen Stanwood. ABSTRACT: In 1658, Charles de Rochefort published a description of Apalache, an Indigenous polity located in southeastern North America that had welcomed French and English refugees. Usually dismissed as a tall tale, Rochefort’s account has never been thoroughly analyzed. The story demonstrates how Europeans in the early period of colonization understood America as a place of wonder and inspiration. In addition, one can learn how information (and misinformation) traveled across the Atlantic. Rochefort probably patched his tale together from various oral sources, including some that came from Indigenous Americans. As a result, Rochefort revealed a lost world of stories and shows the myriad ways Europeans tried to make sense of America.

Brett Rushforth@brettrushforth· Feb 25

Ginny Reinburg's essay changes how we think about--and teach--Menocchio's story (and more). She shows that the conflict originated in, and was shaped by, clerical sexual abuse, institutional protections for abusers, and a broad struggle to resist. #earlymodern @vreinburg.bsky.social

Brett Rushforth@brettrushforth· Feb 24

Amanda Herbert and Kevin Dawson debut a new HLQ article category called Early/Modern Connections: original #earlymodern research in service of the public good. The article and cover feature art by Ebony Iman Dallas. Open access: muse.jhu.edu/article/983132

Brett Rushforth@brettrushforth· Feb 19

Happy to announce the publication of the latest issue of the HLQ. Access now through Project MUSE. muse.jhu.edu/issue/56420

CONTENTS

EDITOR’S NOTE

New Directions for the HLQ
BRETT RUSHFORTH

RESEARCH ARTICLES

“The Mysteries of Apalache”: Tall Tales and Lost Worlds in the Early American South
OWEN STANWOOD

Indigenous Sun Worship in the Early Modern English Colonial Imagination
SOPHIE BATTELL

Escaping Rumor in the Mexican Inquisition
DARIA BERMAN

Rhetorical Rebound: Disabling Critique in Richard III
PASQUALE TOSCANO

A “Disposition to Laziness”: Visions of Cockaigne in the Early Modern Atlantic World
DANIEL JOHNSON

ASSESSMENTS AND APPROACHES

How Menocchio’s Ordeal Began: Clerical Sex Abuse and the Catholic Church in the Sixteenth and Twenty-First Centuries
VIRGINIA REINBURG

EARLY/MODERN CONNECTIONS

Black Aquatics: Early Modern Past, Present, and Future
AMANDA HERBERT & KEVIN DAWSON

Brett Rushforth@brettrushforth· Jan 8

I couldn't be happier, or more honored, that the first issue of the redesigned and reimagined HLQ will feature the work of the Somali American artist Ebony Iman Dallas. Like much of her work, 𝘉𝘓𝘈𝘊𝘒𝘰𝘶𝘵: 𝘔𝘢𝘥𝘰𝘯𝘯𝘢 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘊𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥 puts past and present in vital conversation. #earlymodern #skystorians

Brett Rushforth@brettrushforth· Jan 7

Proofs! (Not that colonialism, sovereignty, resource extraction, forced relocations, or racialized power are relevant to the modern world...)

Image of the cover and title page for a book titled Beyond the Ocean: France and the Atlantic World from the Crusades to the Age of Revolutions, by Christopher Hodson and Brett Rushforth. The cover features an 18th century watercolor of a harbor with three large ships and some smaller boats in the foreground and coastline with rising hills in the background.

Brett Rushforth@brettrushforth· Nov 17

Claude already knows...

Brett Rushforth@brettrushforth· Oct 17

Ros Smith has an article coming out in the HLQ in a few weeks that discusses a similar example: Rosalind Smith, "Errant Marks: Misreading, Marginalia, and Early Modern Women's Book Use."

Brett Rushforth@brettrushforth· Sep 30

"A major shift in how we understand colonial growth in the early Caribbean, colonial-Indigenous relations, the origins of slavery in the Caribbean and North America, and the connections between piracy, privateering, and colonization." Greg O'Malley nails it. Congrats @csschmitt.bsky.social!

Brett Rushforth@brettrushforth· Sep 26

Haha, on it! The previous issue was a bunch of art historians, so their images were fun to play with (great essays, too).

A collection of eight historical images from nineteenth-century Britain illustrating a collection of essays titled "Paintings, Peepshows, and Porcupines: Exhibitions in London, 1763-1851"

Brett Rushforth@brettrushforth· Sep 25

Morteza Lak, “Print Culture and the Composition of a Visual Anthology: The Picturesque Beauties of Shakespeare (1783-1787)" muse.jhu.edu/article/970063 #shakespeare #bookhist #printculture

Brett Rushforth@brettrushforth· Sep 25

Richard Palmer and David Roberts, “Harris v. Harris: A Restoration Actor at the Court of Arches” muse.jhu.edu/article/970064

Brett Rushforth@brettrushforth· Sep 25

Jacob Murel, “The Readers and Annotations of the First English Quran (1649)” muse.jhu.edu/article/970062

Brett Rushforth@brettrushforth· Sep 25

Spencer Weinreich, “The Invasion of Utopia” muse.jhu.edu/article/970061 #utopia #earlymodern #renaissancelit