Stereotypes and Stereotyping in the Early Modern World
The use and abuse of stereotypes is not limited to present-day politics. In this conference, experts in British and American history examine stereotypes related to such vital issues as race, religion, gender, nationality, and occupation. The program explores how stereotyping then, as now, persisted across different spheres of life; how individuals and groups responded; and with what consequences.
Conference Schedule
FRIDAY, APRIL 19
8:30 a.m. - Registration & Coffee
9:15 a.m. - Welcome: Steve Hindle (The Huntington)
Remarks: Koji Yamamoto (University of Tokyo)
9:30 a.m. - Session 1: Popery and Religious Stereotypes
Moderator: Koji Yamamoto
Jennifer Andersen (California State University, San Bernardino)
Controversial Figures as Synecdoches: Thomas Nash's Distorted Snapshots of Puritans and Catholics
Peter Lake (Vanderbilt University)
Puritans and Projectors in the Plays of Ben Jonson
Abigail Swingen (Texas Tech University)
Whigs, Tories, and Jacobites: Stereotypes and the Financial Revolution
12:30 p.m. - Lunch
1:30 p.m. - Session 2: Economy, Occupations, and Gender
Moderator: Peter Lake
Koji Yamamoto
Beyond ‘Keywords’: History Plays, Stereotypes and the Staging of Political Economy in late Elizabethan England
Jane Whittle (University of Exeter)
The Early Modern Housewife: A Positive Stereotype of the Working Woman?
Lisa Cody (Claremont McKenna College)
Mind, Body, Soul, and Mirrors: Stereotyping Women in Early Modern England
SATURDAY, APRIL 20
9 a.m. - Registration & Coffee
9:30 a.m. - Session 3: Colonies and Empire
Moderator: Koji Yamamoto
Kristen Block (University of Tennessee, Knoxville)
Creating and Fighting Stereotypes of Sin and Sexual Excess: Leprosy and Race in the 18th-Century Caribbean
Valerie Forman (New York University)
Managing Slave Plantation Labor: Or, How Productivity Became Beautiful and Accumulation Anti-tyrannical. A Study of the Political Economy of Sugar in the Early Modern Transatlantic World
Sharon Block (University of California, Irvine)
Daily Descriptions as Racemaking in Colonial North America
12:30 p.m. - Lunch
1:30 p.m. - Session 4: Stereotypes in Archives and on Stage
Moderator: Peter Lake
Bridget Orr (Vanderbilt University)
Re-presenting Character: Dramaturgy Versus Performance in Eighteenth-Century Stereotypes
Miles Parks Grier (Queens College, City University of New York)
Staging the Transferable Stigma of Early Modern Blackness
Brendan Kane (University of Connecticut)
Explicit Bias and the Politics of Difference in Irish-English Encounter
4:30 p.m. - Closing Remarks
Funding provided by The Huntington's William French Smith Endowment