Jane Degenhardt | University of Massachusetts Amherst (original) (raw)

Papers by Jane Degenhardt

Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies

: Addressing an audience at the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo in 1993, the Oceanic anthropologist... more : Addressing an audience at the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo in 1993, the Oceanic anthropologist Epeli Hau‘ofa delivered a blistering rebuke of the “belittling” view of states and territories, one he contended was held not only by the West, but also by the Pacific’s own national and regional governments.1 Such a view, resulting in a posture of economic dependence rather than self-sufficiency, is “traceable to the early years of interactions with Europeans” and emerged intrinsically from globally oriented “macroeconomic” and “macropolitical” perspectives that perceived the islands to be small, distant, and fragmented— predisposed to incorporation into colonial geographies (148–49). Hau‘ofa suggested that in order to revise this perspective it was better to conceive of the region not as “islands in a far sea,” but rather as “a sea of islands” (152–53). Whereas “islands in a far sea” evoked “tiny, isolated dots,” Hau‘ofa called for “a more holistic perspective in which things are seen in the totality of their relationships” (153). The Oceanic sea of islands had never been far, nor small, nor fragmented; they were not tiny islands to be carved up and colonized, but imbued with locality as with culture.

The Arden Handbook of Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama, 2023

While many scholars are now ready to accept the deeply embedded history of race in the early mode... more While many scholars are now ready to accept the deeply embedded history of race in the early modern and pre-modern periods, scholarship on race in these periods has enjoyed a relatively short history. And yet much ground has been covered between the initial forays of Eldred Jones (1965) into the representation of Africans on the early modern stage and the current explosion of scholarship emerging in print as well as in conferences, special symposia, podcasts and many online forums. Any scholar wishing to delve into the now substantial body of critical and theoretical work on early modern race will find a wealth of entry points and pathways that diverge and intersect over the last decades of the twentieth century and the first decades of the twenty-first. In their introduction to Shakespeare Quarterly's first special issue dedicated to discussions of race (2016), Peter Erickson and Kim F. Hall outline three phases of early modern scholarship following the work of Jones. These include the 'sustained collective movement of the 1990s' (4) consisting of foundational work by Ania Loomba (1989), Margo Hendricks and Patricia Parker (1994) and Kim Hall (1995); an expansive body of more diffused work produced between 2000 and 2015; and the then present and future period of work for which Erickson and Hall suggest a number of possible directions. Dennis Britton's useful 'Recent Studies' on early modern race (2015) provides a comprehensive overview of books and articles spanning from 1965 to 2015. And Urvashi Chakravarty's subsequent discussion of 'The Renaissance of Race and the Future of Early Modern Race Studies' (2020) offers a thoughtful reflection on the state of the field and possible new avenues for future expansion. These are great resources for establishing a critical sense of the field and its genealogical development. 1 In our current twenty-first-century moment, there is more new work emerging on early modern drama and race than I can reasonably take account of here-a gratifying and long overdue development. Notably, non-print venues have proven to be the most hospitable mediums for the publication and dissemination of exciting new work on race, which reflects the protracted timescale of print and the

Offering in-depth discussions of plays by Shakespeare, Marlowe, Heywood, Dekker, and others, this... more Offering in-depth discussions of plays by Shakespeare, Marlowe, Heywood, Dekker, and others, this study considers how England’s economic expansion through global commerce and nascent colonial exploration produced new understandings of the role of fortune in the world, both as a philosophy of chance and luck and a means by which to accumulate wealth. While largely derided as a sinful, earthly distraction in the Boethian tradition of the Middle Ages, fortune made a comeback on the Renaissance stage as a force associated with virtuous opportunities, valiant risks, and ennobling adventures. Fortune’s Empire shows how a pagan goddess who blindly spins the wheel of our lives becomes an avatar for new understandings of risk and investment that underwrite capitalist systems of value in a period of globalization. The book also demonstrates how fortune helped to foster a philosophy of action in a Protestant culture where divine providence remained largely incomprehensible and inaccessible to ...

Globalizing Fortune on The Early Modern Stage

Chapter 2 considers how Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice (c.1596) and Thomas Heywood’s The Four P... more Chapter 2 considers how Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice (c.1596) and Thomas Heywood’s The Four Prentices of London (c.1594) generate theatrical wonder by embracing the aesthetic and affective potential of a hidden providence, while the same time demonstrating how the inaccessibility of providential knowledge creates opportunities to empower human interventions. By analogizing the risks associated with sea travel, overseas investment, the transmission of news, the operations of a lottery, and theatrical performance, these plays endorse the concept of adventure as a productive means to engaging fortune and responding to unknown outcomes. Playwrights drew upon the structural and temporal relationship between fortune and providence to experiment with new forms of representation, utilizing both on-stage and off-stage space to simulate tests of fortune that presumed to yield wondrous results. At the same time, they demonstrate how theatrical simulations of fortune provide opportunities t...

This article turns to Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors (1594) in order to revise critical accounts ... more This article turns to Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors (1594) in order to revise critical accounts of globalization and to propose a contrasting notion of “world” as a function of affective experience, collective narration, and virtual witnessing. Shakespeare’s play captures how a newly global imaginary was beginning to disrupt many of the foundations of personal identity and the familiar reference points of the worlds that sustained it. The Comedy of Errors acknowledges the integrative effects of a globalizing system while also emphasizing its multiply-centered, regional specificity; Shakespeare models not a single, totalizing globality but a plurality of worlds characterized by continuous rupture, reconfiguration, and an ongoing state of in-betweenness. Not only does the play illuminate a non-Eurocentric view of globalization but it explores the alienation that attends migration and displacement at a global scale and the ways these movements mark the body for violence and refigure t...

Mfs Modern Fiction Studies, 2008

... Many thanks to Nancy Bentley, Laura Doyle, Lise Sanders, Asha Nadkarni, Hoang Phan, Floyd Che... more ... Many thanks to Nancy Bentley, Laura Doyle, Lise Sanders, Asha Nadkarni, Hoang Phan, Floyd Cheung, Josephine Park, Jennifer Higginbotham, Jessica Rosenfeld, Elizabeth Williamson, Jean ... On Asian American discrimination and the law more broadly, see Angelo Ancheta. ...

Renaissance Drama

j a n e h w a n g d e g e n h a r d t , University of Massachusetts Amherst Gentle breath of your... more j a n e h w a n g d e g e n h a r d t , University of Massachusetts Amherst Gentle breath of yours my sails / Must fill, or else my project fails.

This essay explores early modern views of China as they were expressed through European represent... more This essay explores early modern views of China as they were expressed through European representations of Chinese porcelain. Analyzing a range of artistic, printed, and dramatic texts, I show how sixteenth-and seventeenth-century western mythologies surrounding the production of chinaware offer a striking contrast to the more denigrating discourse of chinoiserie that developed in the eighteenth century. Focusing particularly on descriptions of chinaware that circulated in early modern England, I demonstrate how writers ranging from Mandeville to Hakluyt to Shakespeare and Jonson foster ideas about the mysteries of Chinese porcelain that emphasize its virtuous and magical properties. I also consider contemporary English translations of Marco Polo, the Portuguese trader Duarte Barbosa, and the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci, as well as Italian paintings by Andrea Mantegna and Giovanni Bellini, revealing an admiration for chinaware that circulated throughout Europe. Examining the shifting ways that commodification affected perceptions of chinaware and vice versa, I draw attention to a particular period of transition over the first half of the seventeenth century when Chinese porcelain became increasingly available to moneyed English consumers. During this time, the myths surrounding porcelain's creation were both demystified and reclaimed, while on the public stage diverse perceptions of chinaware offered a way to arbitrate social competency. Throughout, I chart an early modern discourse of chinaware in relation to an evolving history of East-West trade, revealing how the mysterious origins of Chinese porcelain both resisted and played into its commodification.

Islamic Conversion and Christian Resistance on the Early Modern Stage, 2010

Oxford Handbooks Online, 2011

Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, 2009

... Philip Massinger's The Renegado (1624) stages a confrontation between Christians and Mus... more ... Philip Massinger's The Renegado (1624) stages a confrontation between Christians and Muslims in the cross ... as allegories for economic anxieties, but as examples of how "turning Turk" assumed an ... 22 This problem of verification is directly alluded to in a conversation between ...

ELH, 2006

... The small body of critics who have addressed the play over the past fifty years either focus,... more ... The small body of critics who have addressed the play over the past fifty years either focus, like Louise Clubb (1964), on the striking anomaly of its apparent Catholic content or else attempt, like Larry Champion (1984) and Jose M. Ruano de la Haza (1991), to explain away this ...

Studies in Philology, 2013

MFS Modern Fiction Studies, 2008