In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Introduction
  • Thomas DiPiero and Devoney Looser

This post-1660 issue of the Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies includes, as is customary, several fine essays and book reviews. The issue begins with Ellen R. Welch's "Dancing the Nation: Performing France in the Seventeenth-Century Ballets des nations," which considers a court entertainment in which costumed dancers impersonated stereotypical national types. Welch uses this dance as an occasion to investigate how Frenchness is defined in contrast to foreign national types, showing how the ballet sets the stage for subsequent conversations on nations and nationhood.

Gunhild Eriksdotter's "Did the Little Ice Age Affect Indoor Climate and Comfort?: Re-theorizing Climate History and Architecture from the Early Modern Period" considers the understudied confluence of climate history and architecture, taking as its starting point the need for significantly longer heating periods in the "Little Ice Age." Architectural changes during significant periods of cold in Northern Europe, from 1550 to 1730, allow us to investigate ways that status was linked to comfort during the early modern period. Eriksdotter shows why we need to integrate climate history as a dynamic variable in the study of historical buildings and remains.

"The Hazards of Expurgation: Adapting Measure for Measure to the Bowdler Family Shakespeare," by Adam H. Kitzes, shows us that "bowdlerizing," at least in the case of this particular play, involved a more complicated editing process than scholars have previously understood. Kitzes looks over several editions of Family Shakespeare in order to document the full extent of the changes made by Bowdler and to speculate further on why they were undertaken. The essay argues that, rather than merely censor Shakespeare, Bowdler sought to reconcile a longing for a perceived oral culture of literary social coteries with an acceptance of the plays as carefully edited printed texts.

Following these three essays readers will find a special section made up of brief explorations and position papers. With this issue, we introduce a forum [End Page 1] on "What is Early Modern?" which will continue through several upcoming issues of JEMCS. Of course, the Editors of JEMCS are keenly aware of the ways in which the term "Early Modern" is variously perceived and used, not to mention debated and misunderstood. The very way in which we have conceived of our enterprise as a journal has been informed by a sense of the differences between "early" and "late" early modern. Indeed, for more than eight years, we have divided our contents into pre- and post-1660 issues, an editorial decision that itself raises questions about the label "Early Modern" and its utility in demarking periods and dates, not to mention its national associations. To further scrutinize and consider this term, in the past and in the present moment, we asked a number of scholars from different disciplinary perspectives to consider what "Early Modern" means and has meant to the scholarly enterprise. We are proud to introduce the first fruits of those invitations, in the form of four thoughtful essays by top scholars Mitchell Greenberg, Laura Mandell, Andrew McConnell Stott, and James Thompson. We look forward to continuing this conversation with our readers and in future issues of JEMCS. [End Page 2]

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