Presented by Wendy Wall Avalon Professor of the Humanities Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence Professor of English at Northwestern University Abstract: The boundaries of the world exploded in early modern England. With telescopes aimed at the stars, microscopes revealing unseen elements of life on earth, and colonial encounters reconfiguring what Europeans knew about cartography and ecosystems, writers and artists grappled with uncertainty on many fronts. Shakespeare and Donne, for instance, offer rich meditations demonstrating the exhilaration and fear involving in imagining brave new worlds. How do newly audible literary voices in the early modern archive alter our understanding of this time of political, scientific, and religious transformations? The discovery of a seventeenth-century poet named Hester Pulter––a writer fascinated by Galileo’s findings, dancing atoms, and natural philosophy–– offers an occasion to reflect on what it means to push the limits of the known world, both in early modern terms – and our own. Bio: Wendy Wall is Avalon Professor of the Humanities, Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence, and Professor of English at Northwestern University. Professor Wendy Wall researches topics as wide-ranging as Renaissance poetry, recipes, literature and science, women’s writing, digital humanities, gender, authorship, print culture, and theater. She specializes […]