Writing the Nation: Correspondence and Collaboration in Early Modern British Science (RBS-Mellon Lecture)

Date: 16 March 2016
Time: 4:45 p.m.
Location: Paulson Reading Room, Knight Library, University of Oregon
Presented by: The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School, Oregon Rare Books Initiative, Robert D. Clark Honors College, University of Oregon College of Arts and Sciences, Department of English, Oregon Humanities Center, and University of Oregon Libraries Special Collections and University Archives

Oregon Rare Books Initiative presents Elizabeth Yale (Center for the Book, University of Iowa):

From the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence to this year’s vote on Britain’s exit from the European Union (“Brexit,” in the press), the question of what Britain is—and will be—has been in the news. This talk explores that question from the perspective of the seventeenth century sciences of the land—natural history and antiquarian studies, which, in tracing the human and natural history of Britain, sought to hold up a mirror that showed Britons themselves. Linking themselves together through correspondence and travel, naturalists in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland collectively sourced and funded their work, making innovative use of printed instruments such as subscription proposals and questionnaires. They collected and shared local particulars—place names, agricultural practices, plant specimens, sketches of ancient ruins—as a means of constructing “Britain” as an economic and political union and an identity grounded in shared languages and landscapes. Though their portraits of “Britain” refused to cohere, they created a shared framework for collaboration and debate, one that defied easy distinctions between print and scribal cultures.

Oregon Rare Books Initiative is co-organized by Elizabeth Bohls, Vera Keller, and Gordon Sayre, and is sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School, Oregon Rare Books Initiative, Robert D. Clark Honors College, University of Oregon College of Arts and Sciences, Department of English, Oregon Humanities Center, and University of Oregon Libraries Special Collections and University Archives.