About

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