Dr. Jessica Otis
jotis2@gmu.edu
Class Location & Time: Thursdays 7:20-10pm, Petersen 2411 (and sometimes Zoom)
Office Hours: Whenever/wherever, just send me an email and we’ll figure out a time/place
Course Description:
“No man is an island,” the English poet John Donne wrote in 1624. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries England was not an island either; instead it was one part of large island combined with a series of smaller islands, all surrounded by waters that functioned as much as a superhighway as a moat. The people of early modern England migrated and immigrated, went to war and went to sea, traded abroad and traveled abroad. This reading course will explore the history of early modern England and its relationship to the rest of the world through the lens of recent scholarship on immigration and war, gender and everyday life, religion and politics, and science and society.
Required Course Materials/Expenses:
All course materials are available online or through GMU libraries. Students may need to use a VPN to access certain materials if they are off-campus. Mode of access is included in square brackets after each item in the course schedule.
Students are expected to have a device that connects to the internet (laptop, mobile phone, etc.) for course communications and some in-class activities. If you don’t have and can’t obtain access to appropriate technology, please contact me ASAP and we’ll find a path forward for you.
Optional Course Materials/Expenses:
For those of you who want to purchase any of our course books in order to read them in an alternate modality than what the GMU Libraries can offer, here is the course reading list broken down by access type.
Online Books:
Alec Ryrie, The Age of Reformation: The Tudor and Stewart Realms 1485-1603
Mark Ormord, Immigrant England, 1300-1550
Neil Murphy, The Tudor Occupation of Boulogne: Conquest, Colonisation and Imperial Monarchy, 1544-1550
Alexander Samson, Mary and Philip: The Marriage of Tudor England and Hapbsurg Spain
Angela Nicholls, Almshouses in Early Modern England: Charitable Housing in the Mixed Economy of Welfare, 1550-1735
Alastair Bellany and Thomas Cogswell, The Murder of King James I
Richard J. Blakemore and Elaine Murphy, The British Civil Wars at Sea
Caroline Boswell, Disaffection and Everyday Life in Interregnum England
David Cressy, England’s Islands in a Sea of Troubles
Michelle DiMeo, Lady Ranelagh: The Incomparable Life of Robert Boyle’s Sister
Craig Spence, Accidents and Violent Deaths in Early Modern London
William Derringer, Calculated Values: Finance, Politics, and the Quantitative Age
Physical Reserve Books:
John Spurr, The Post-Reformation: Religion, Politics and Society in Britain, 1603-1714
Miranda Kaufman, Black Tudors: The Untold Story
Susan D. Amussen and David E. Underdown, Gender, Culture and Politics in England, 1560-1640: Turning the World Upside Down