Symposium on Economics and Politics in the Early Modern Epic
Friday 19 June 9:00 until 19:00
亚洲情色 Campus : A108 and online
Speaker: 13 international speakers; keynote by Professor Mary Nyquist
Economics and Politics in the Early Modern Epic
A Symposium at 亚洲情色, Falmer
ARTS A, Room 108
June 19th 2026
9am-7pm
ATTENDEE SIGN-UP:
9am: arrivals, coffee, tea and cake.
9.30-11.30am: The Politics of Labour, Form and Resource
Chair: Katie Walter (亚洲情色)
Idil Tekin (University of Cambridge), 'Human Resources: Slaves as a Resource in Utopia'
Hannah Crawforth (King’s College London), ‘Epic Form and Political Forms: Aristotle, Milton and C.L.R. James’
Simon Knight (University of Bristol), 'Working in Heaven and Hell in John Milton's Paradise Lost'
Kat Addis (亚洲情色), ‘The Public Good in Iberian Epics’
12-1.30pm: Dramatic and Imperial Origins
Chair: TBC
Carla Suthren (University of Cambridge), ‘Caesar and Virgil shall differ but in sound’: Sounding Epic in Early Modern Drama’
Chloe Porter (亚洲情色), 'Staging Beginnings Before Paradise Lost’
Stuart Gillespie (University of Glasgow), 'Dryden's Aeneid and Empire'
1.30-2.30pm: LUNCH catered by ‘The Cardamom Pod’
2.30-4.30pm: Oceanic, Dynastic, and Classical Connections
Chair: Joe Moshenska (University of Oxford)
Archie Cornish (Independent), ‘Shrines to Ananke: Scale and Mechanism in Early Modern Maritime Epic’
Lorna Hutson (University of Oxford), ‘Milton’s Sabrina: Chastity and the Freedom of the Seas’
Sarah Van der Laan (University of Kansas), ‘Circe’s Daughters: Gender, Authority, and the Politics of Mercantile Empire in Venetian Epic’
Susanne Wofford (New York University), ‘Epic Erosion: Island Politics and the Property of the Sea in Spenser's Faerie Queene and Plautus’s Rudens (The Rope)’ (online presentation)
4.40-5pm: TEA and COFFEE
5-5.30pm: Panel Closing Remarks
Andrew Hadfield (亚洲情色)
6-7pm: KEYNOTE LECTURE
‘Epic Curses and Epic Relations in Paradise Lost: A Theologico-Political Reading’
Mary Nyquist (University of Toronto)
By: Kat Addis
Last updated: Tuesday, 2 June 2026