A Companion to the Global Renaissance

Amrita Senis Associate Professor and Deputy Director, UGC-HRDC, University of Calcutta, and affiliated member of the Department of English. She is coeditor of Civic Performance: Pageantry and Entertainments in Early Modern London , with J. Caitlin Finlayson, (Routledge, 2020), and has also coedited a special issue of the Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studie s on “Alternative Histories of the East India Company” (2017). She has published essays and book chapters on East India Company women, Bollywood Shakespeares, and early modern ethnography.

Jyotsna G. Singhis Professor in the Department of English at Michigan State University. Her published works include Colonial Narratives/Cultural Dialogues: “Discoveries” of India in the Language of Colonialism (Routledge, 1996), Shakespeare and Postcolonial Theory (Bloomsbury Arden, 2019), Travel Knowledge (coedited with Ivo Kamps; Palgrave, 2001), The Weyward Sisters: Shakespeare and Feminist Politics (coedited with Dympna Callaghan and Lorraine Helms; Wiley Blackwell, 1994), A Companion to the Global Renaissance (editor; Wiley Blackwell, 2009), The Postcolonial World (coedited with David Kim; Routledge, 2016), and numerous book chapters and articles. She serves as a coeditor for a book series New Transculturalisms, 1400–1800 (Palgrave). Singh has also been the recipient of several visiting fellowships, including at Queen Mary University of London, UK (2008) and John Carter Brown Library, Brown University (2010). Most recently, she was elected a Visiting Fellow, St. Catherine’s College, Oxford University, UK (Michaelmas term, 2019).

Ian Smithis Richard and Joan Sell Professor in the Humanities at Lafayette College in the Department of English, where he teaches courses in Shakespeare and early modern drama, early modern and critical race studies, and sexuality. He is the author of Race and Rhetoric in the Renaissance: Barbarian Errors (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) and collaborator on Othello Re-imagined in Sepia (Lucia Press, 2012). His work on Shakespeare and early modern drama has been published in several anthologies and journals. He is currently completing a book on Shakespeare, reading, and race titled Black Shakespeare .

Adam Smythteaches English Literature and the History of the Book at Balliol College, Oxford. His books include Material Texts in Early Modern England (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Autobiography in Early Modern England (Cambridge University Press, 2010), and (edited with Dennis Duncan) Book Parts (Oxford University Press, 2019). He writes regularly for the London Review of Books .

Mihoko Suzukiis Professor of English and Cooper Fellow in the Humanities Emerita, University of Miami. She is the author of Metamorphoses of Helen: Authority, Difference, and the Epic (Cornell University Press, 1989), Subordinate Subjects: Gender, the Political Nation, and Literary Form in England, 1588–1688 (Routledge, 2003), and Antigone’s Example: Early Modern Women’s Political Writing in Times of Civil War from Christine de Pizan to Helen Maria Williams (2021). She is editor of History of British Women Writing , 1610–1690 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) and coeditor, with Ann Rosalind Jones and Jyotsna Singh, of New Transculturalisms, 1400–1800 , a book series at Palgrave Macmillan. Her most recent articles include a comparative study of early modern literacies in Western Europe, Islam, and East Asia in the Bloomsbury History of Education in the Renaissance and a chapter (in Japanese) on early modern gender and authorship in Rethinking Authorship in Japan, East Asia, and Europe (Iwanami-shoten).

Edward “Mac” Testis currently Professor and Chair of English at Boise State University. He is a translator, poet, and Renaissance scholar. He has published a book of poetry, three books of translated poetry, and numerous essays and reviews. Most recently he published Sacred Seeds: New World Plants in Early Modern English Literature (University of Nebraska Press, 2019), which was short-listed for the British Society of Literature and Science annual book prize. He is the recipient of several grants and fellowships, including the Idaho Humanities Council Research Grant, National Endowment for Humanities (NEH) summer seminar, Boise State University Research Grants, Alexa Rose Foundation; and fellowships at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Huntington Library and the John Carter Brown Library. Test is currently working on the first English translation of the Comedia famosa de la monja alférez (“The Famous Comedy of the Lieutenant Nun” attributed to Juan Pérez de Montalbán), and a translation of the Chilean poet Raúl Zurita’s Ciudades de Agua (“The Cities of Water”).

Virginia Mason Vaughanis Professor Emerita and Research Professor of English at Clark University. She is the author of Othello: A Contextual History (Cambridge University Press, 1994) and Performing Blackness on English Stages, 1500–1800 (Cambridge University Press, 2005). Vaughan edited Antony and Cleopatra for the Third Norton Shakespeare (2015) and wrote Antony and Cleopatra: Language and Writing for Arden Shakespeare (2016). With Alden T. Vaughan, she coedited The Tempest for the Third Arden Series (1999; rev. ed. 2011) and coauthored Shakespeare in America for Oxford Shakespeare Topics (2012). Her most recent publication, Shakespeare and the Gods (2019), is a study of Shakespeare’s mythological allusions.

Daniel Vitkusis Professor of Literature at the University of California, San Diego, where he holds the Rebeca Hickel Endowed Chair in Early Modern Literature. He is the author of Turning Turk: English Theater and the Multicultural Mediterranean (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) and of numerous articles and book chapters on early modern culture. Vitkus has edited Three Turk Plays from Early Modern England (Columbia University Press, 2000) and Piracy, Slavery and Redemption: Barbary Captivity Narratives from Early Modern England (Columbia University Press, 2001). He also serves as editor of the Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies .

The first edition of this volume was published in 2009, and I am delighted to launch an expanded and updated second edition (2021), A Companion to the Global Renaissance: Literature and Culture in the Era of Expansion, 1500–1700 . My gratitude always to Emma Bennett, my first commissioning editor at Wiley (Blackwell), for her vision and encouragement as the project evolved. My thanks to all the authors from the 2009 edition whose updated essays will generate an expanding “conversation” with the new additional chapters.

Since 2009, it has been heartening to witness a further global “turn” in early modern studies, with an increasing emphasis on connected histories and cultural cross-pollinations beyond Europe. This second edition, I hope, will contribute to these ongoing endeavors. I am grateful to scholars who have shared this global vision. For their scholarship, friendship, conversations, comments, and input on this volume, I must thank Guido Van Meersbergen, Nandini Das, Matthew Dimmock, Ladan Niayesh, Ian Smith, Bernadette Andrea, Gerald MacLean, João Vicente Melo, Jean Howard, Mihoko Suzuki, Eva Johanna Holmberg, Abdulhamit Arvas, Colm MacCrossan, and Daniel Vitkus.

I am particularly grateful to commissioning editors at Wiley, Catriona King and Nicole Allen for believing in this second edition and helping me to develop the new proposal. Nicole’s input has also been invaluable in launching the book off the ground. Finally, I appreciate managing editor, Liz Wingett, for her assistance and advice in the production process.