Abstract: This talk attends to the terrestrial forces at play in the opening and conclusion of Shakespeare’s Henry V as the chalky cliffs of Dover and coast of Calais are figuratively transformed from abutting battlefronts into forcibly conjoined human bodies. The talk argues for the racializing effects of an early modern mode of thinking that I characterize as “cliff-consciousness.” Shared among dramatists, lexicographers, and antiquarians of the period, this counter-intuitive philological mode of thinking with and about the earth’s precipices resists equating edges with endings, cliffs with borders, or promontories with limits. Instead, it sets the minds of early moderns to work on cultural, terrestrial, and racial conjunctions that underpin notions of embodied whiteness. The talk explores how, two hundred years before the founding of the Geological Society in England, “cliff-consciousness” lent a terra-somatic logic to the construction of northern European whiteness.
This event will be held online via Zoom. You can access the meeting using this link: https://columbiauniversity.zoom.us/j/99982635361?pwd=NEZSMXU5cU5MREhzNFhKTEMwUDlMZz09.
The full Zoom invitation is copied below.
The meeting will be held from 7-8:30pm EST, with announcements from 7-7:15pm, the talk 7:15-8:00pm and Q&A from 8-8:30pm. We will also host a casual social/cocktail half hour after the meeting. Since there won't be a dinner and we have no space constraints, an RSVP is not required.
