Colloquium Series: Margaret Ezell & Christopher Bishop 2/24/26
Did seventeenth-century London women printers network? Looking for traces in all the wrong places
Liturgies of Destruction: Christian Ritual Practice and the Moral Imaginations of the Wehrmacht, 1942-1945
Margaret Ezell, Distinguished Professor | English
Abstract:
This talk will explore some of the issues I am working on as part of my research on seventeenth-century London women printers, many of whom were associated with the Paul’s Wharf, Thames street area between 1640 and 1690. For many years, references to early modern women in the London print trades were strictly limited: women’s names were recorded but almost exclusively as they were wives, widows, or daughters of male printers. Despite the inherent difficulties in recovering early modern women’s labor, more attention has begun to be paid recently to individual women in the print trades; one of the issues which seems to be foreground in these studies is asking whether these women tended to work together in loose, informal groups, to create a sort of sisterly network. The larger issue posed is how important was gender in the book trade: did women authors, for example, such as Margaret Cavendish, prefer to work with women printers? Given the types of evidence we currently rely on, is it possible to reconstruct a network of women printers?
Christopher Bishop, Ph.D. Student | History
Abstract:
Recent scholarship on the Wehrmacht has examined its socio-cultural vocabularies, but religion as a category of analysis for rank-and-file soldiers remains underexplored. This paper investigates the role of religious ritual practice within the Wehrmacht during the Second World War, drawing on the writings of service personnel stationed in France and the Soviet Union. I argue that religion provided soldiers with a framework to conceptualize their enemies—particularly the Soviets—as embodiments of secularism and materialism, while also sustaining connections to the home front. Religious ritual reinforced intimate, nationalist, and moral discourses, helping soldiers perceive themselves and their comrades as honorable, decent family men, united under a shared identity. By examining this intersection of religion, identity, and military service, this study illuminates how ritual practice mediated the ideological and emotional frameworks of Wehrmacht personnel, even as it operated alongside the broader goals of Nazi expansion.
The Colloquium Series offers Glasscock Center Fellows an opportunity to discuss a work-in-progress with faculty and graduate students from different disciplines. Each colloquium begins with the presenter’s short (10-15 minute) exposition of the project, after which the floor is open for comments and queries. The format is by design informal, conversational, and interdisciplinary.
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