The Early Modern Incubator (EMI) is a working group at Dartmouth College founded by Profs. Jessica Beckman, Danielle Callegari, Elizabeth Kassler-Taub, and Matthew Ritger.
The Incubator convenes emerging and established scholars in early modern studies to launch new work in a collaborative, interdisciplinary forum. By providing opportunities for scholarly innovation and mentorship, the Incubator seeks to unlock new models for theorizing a global early modern world that has indelibly marked our own.
The Early Modern Incubator is generously sponsored by a Venn Vision grant from the Leslie Center for the Humanities.
Anthonius Leemans, Still Life with a Copy of De Waere Mercurius, a Broadsheet with the News of Tromp’s Victory over three English Ships on 28 June 1639, and a Poem telling the story of Apelles and the Cobbler, 1655. Held by the Rijksmuseum, Public Domain.
Who’s involved
Jessica Beckman, Assistant Professor, Department of English and Creative Writing, specializing in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literature. Jessica holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University. Her work has appeared in Spenser Studies and Exemplaria, among other venues. She is currently working on a book entitled The Kinetic Text, which studies how spatial, recursive, and discontinuous reading can be harnessed to produce poetic effects.
Danielle Callegari, Assistant Professor, Department of French and Italian, specializing in premodern Italian literature. Danielle holds a Ph.D. from New York University. Her first monograph, Dante’s Gluttons: Food and Society from the Convivio to the Comedy was published by Amsterdam University Press in 2022. She currently has multiple projects underway, including a long history of the Italian cookbook and its politics beginning with Frederick II’s 13th-century Liber de coquina.
Elizabeth Kassler-Taub, Assistant Professor, Department of Art History, specializing in early modern art and architecture, especially sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy. Elizabeth holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University. Her work has appeared in Modern Philology and Word & Image, among other venues. Her current book project, Elastic Empire: Architecture, Urbanism, and Identity in Early Modern Palermo, explores the architectural and urban development of early modern Palermo during the first centuries of Spanish viceregal rule.
Matthew Ritger, Assistant Professor, Department of English and Creative Writing, specializing in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literature. Matthew holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University. His work has appeared in Renaissance Quarterly and Shakespeare Studies, among other venues. His current book project, Objects of Correction: Literary Humanism and Carceral Institutions in Early Modern England, constructs a cultural history of the humanist prison and workhouse in the age of More, Shakespeare, and Milton.