The MEMO: MEMOs and Society for Renaissance Studies Online Series

Throughout 2022, MEMOs will be running a series in partnership with the Society for Renaissance Studies where we will host leading scholars of colour in our field, pair them with a suitable member of our MEMOs research team, and they will have a live chat show style discussion on a specific theme. This will be followed by an attendee question and answer session:

• The MEMO on: Early Modern English and Diplomacy in the Islamic Worlds

• 27 July 2022, 5:30pm

• Speakers: Professor Nandini Das (University of Oxford) and Dr Lubaaba Al-Azami (University of Liverpool)

• A Recording of this event is available here.

• The MEMO on: The Global Renaissance and the Islamic Worlds

• 6 March 2022

• Speakers: Professor Jyotsna Singh (Michigan State University) and Dr Amrita Sen (University of Calcutta)

• A recording of this event is available here.

• The MEMO on: The Global Middle Ages and Islamicate Worlds

• 13 October 2022

• Speakers: Dr Fozia Bora (University of Leeds) and Dr Shazia Jagot (University of York).

MEMOs Roundtable, ‘Decolonial Orientations: Travel Studies and the Pre-Modern Islamic World’

Presented at the Hakluyt Society Symposium on 11 November 2021

Chair: Hassana Moosa (King’s College London) 

Speakers: Amrita Sen (University of Calcutta), Nat Cutter (University of Melbourne), and Maria Shmygol (University of Leeds)

A copy of the Hakluyt Symposium programme is available here.

MEMOs Seminar, ‘Merchants, Monarchs and Media’

Hosted by the Society for Renaissance Studies on 5th September 2021

Chair: Lubaaba Al-Azami (University of Liverpool)

Speakers: Lubaaba Al-Azami (University of Liverpool), “Do ye know what I am, sir, and my prerogative?”:Quisara, Gulbudan and the Authority of the Indian Princess

Amrita Sen (University of Calcutta), Jahangir’s China and other Toys: Mughal collecting and the early East India Company

Nat Cutter (University of Melbourne), Knowing the Maghreb in Stuart Scotland, Ireland and Northern England

Peter Good (University of Kent), The East India Company and Local Intermediaries in the Early Modern Persian Gulf and Red Sea 1600-1750

A recording of this event is available here.

MEMOs Seminar, ‘Colonialism, Crusading, Commerce, and Christ’

Hosted by the Society for Renaissance Studies on 30th June 2021

Chair: Munire Maksudoglu (University of Sussex)

Speakers: Charles Beirouti (University of Oxford), Reading the Empires of the East: Intellectual Colonialism on the Early Modern Page and Stage

Aisha Hussain (University of Salford), “Kings must spend Their lives to light up others”: Refashioning Turkish tropes in Thomas Goffe’sThe Raging Turk (1618) andThe Courageous Turk (1619)

Murat Öğütcü (Munzur University), The Three Ladies of London (ca. 1581): Anxieties of Anglo-Ottoman Exchanges

A recording of the event is available here.

MEMOs Seminar, ‘“The Turkish Vanities”: Early Modern English negotiations of Islam’

Hosted by the Society for Renaissance Studies on 17th March 2021

Chair: Samera Hassan (Deputy Editor, MEMOs)

Speakers: Samera Hassan (Deputy Editor, MEMOs), A Sufi Tale in Seventeenth-Century England: Hayy ibn Yaqzan

Hassana Moosa (King’s College London), Lines of Difference: Turks, Moors and the Racialisation of Islam in Early Modern English Drama

Charles Beirouti (University of Oxford), ‘A Church Purified from Errour and Superstition’: Anglican Travellers and the Religious Diversity of the Seventeenth-Century Ottoman World

Peter Good (University of Kent), From Dirtying Carpets to Sharing Cups: Christian impressions of Safavid Shiism

A recording of the event is available here.