Brett Rushforth

On Monday, at 1 PM, we welcome Casey Schmitt to our Ships & Seafaring Talk, where she will present her book "The Predatory Sea", a full-length study of the entangled history of captivity and colonialism using Spanish, French and English archives. Sign up here: www.eventbrite.com/e/ships-seaf...

Green-blue-grey blocky soundwaves on background. Centred in black serif lettering “Sonance”, with “journal of early modern sound studies” underneath.

👀 Over the last few months, I’ve been working with the terrific triumvirate @spparkle.bsky.social, @emiliekmmurphy.bsky.social & Hannah Yip to set up “Sonance: A Journal of Early Modern Sound Studies”, a diamond open access journal dedicated to historic sounds in all their wondrous & eclectic forms.

Thank you!!

Thanks again, Laurent!

Thanks, Casey!

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.

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...

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.

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

My article in the renewed Huntington Library Quarterly, with focus expanded to the global early modern, edited by @brettrushforth.bsky.social . An honor to be included in this wonderful issue! #earlymodern

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

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

Thanks, Katherine! It's all down to the amazing editorial board!

A new issue of HLQ is out - see more via Project Muse. It's really exciting to see the directions the journal is taking with @brettrushforth.bsky.social as editor.

muse.jhu.edu/issue/56420

Cover of the Spring/Summer 2025 issue of the Huntington Library Quarterly. At the top in white letters against a crimson backdrop it reads HLQ | an early modern studies journal. Below is an image of the artwork BLACKout: Madonna and Child, by Ebony Iman Dallas.

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

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

Mélanie Lamotte, "By Flesh and Toil: How Sex, Race, and Labor Shaped the Early French Empire" (Harvard UP, 2026)

It was such a pleasure to interview Mélanie Lamotte about her new book, "By Flesh & Toil". Historians of early modern empire, France, gender, sex, race and labour will find so much food for thought here – a truly game-changing book for our understanding of the early French empire! 🗃️

Ah I see! Glad to know a second Michael Oberg!

Hahaha, oops! Congratulations by proxy, I guess!

The Central Fire of the Iroquois A comprehensive history of the Native American community at the heart of the HaudenosauneeThe people of the Onondaga Nation have lived in central New York St...

Just finished this one, pre-publication. I loved how @michaelleroyoberg.bsky.social balanced sweeping scale with intimate, empathetic storytelling. It's a huge book in all the ways, but it never felt like a slog. yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...

The annual BYU Redd Center funding season is here and we have INCREASED the $$$ amounts!

PLEASE share this as broadly as possible.

We accept applications from ANY discipline for projects focused on the intermountain states of AZ, CO, ID, MT, NV, NM, UT, & WY.

tinyurl.com/2026ReddAwards

Race and the Early Modern — CEMS KCL Blog

Delighted to announce the launch of a new seminar - Race and the Early Modern - in collaboration with @folger.edu.

A monthly, transatlantic, online seminar for research on race, racialisation, and racemaking across #earlymodern Studies.

Sign up to attend!

kingsearlymodern.co.uk/race-and-the...

It was a pleasure to participate in this roundtable about a remarkable book. We find things to critique because that's the exercise, but what an achievement by the editors and all 260+ contributors.

By Flesh and Toil — Harvard University Press A richly detailed transoceanic history of the early French Empire, illuminating how it became bound by a common legal culture of race—as well as how enslaved and free people critically shaped the deve...

@brettrushforth.bsky.social says 'Colonisations' is 'among the most innovative contributions to French colonial scholarship for the pre-revolutionary period'.
But that was just a warm-up for co-editor Mélanie Lamotte's upcoming BY FLESH AND TOIL out this month!!

www.hup.harvard.edu/books/978067...

How exciting!!! Congratulations!

This includes my forthcoming book, What's in a Name. Order now! manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526191908/

And the first new issue features an amazing article by @vreinburg.bsky.social!

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

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.

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

Susan Juster's A Common Grave with tabs in it

Some light post Christmas reading, because when @brettrushforth.bsky.social recommends a book, you buy it.

The Scientific Analysis of Renaissance Recipes: Proteomics, Medicine, and the Body in the Material Renaissance Abstract. Collaborations between the humanities and sciences allow for novel insights into the material world of Renaissance recipe cultures, and in partic

NEW PUBLICATION
Our @historians.org American Historical Review article presents a pathbreaking methodology to analyse the invisible biochemical traces that #earlymodern users left behind on the surface of paper recipes

doi.org/10.1093/ahr/...

Wait, why isn't the post you were quoting showing up? This makes no sense now! (Open the pod bay doors, HAL.)