This website contains the first nine issues of Early Modern Culture, an electronic academic journal founded in 2000 by Cystal Bartolovich and David Siar, who co-edited the journal for the next decade and a half. As the original introduction to the journal noted, with Early Modern Culture, we wanted "to create an on-line space for something like the active and on-going inquiry of a good seminar. Hence, what you will find at this site are . . . in-progress [essays] by major scholars in early modern studies, along with a set of responses from readers -- some junior, some senior -- working on similar topics. With this format, our desire [was] to open a conversation, and make explicit how much all our work depends upon such opportunities for careful reading, as well as critical (in the best sense of that word) exchange."

 

EMC was originally hosted by Carnegie Mellon University on The English Server (or the EServer, as it was called), an innovative site that published a range of cutting-edge e-journals and academic resources. When The Eserver's developer, Geoff Sauer, took an academic position at Washington State University, the site moved with him, as it did when he later accepted a job at Iowa State University. Eventually, having labored on the project for over 20 years, Sauer decided to retire the EServer. As a result, Bartolovich and Siar transferred the general editorship of EMC to Will Stockton at Clemson University, where it now resides (<https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/emc/>). Administrative red tape regarding copyright prevented the first nine issues from being added to the archived files on EMC 2.0, so Bartolovich and Siar finally decided to place them on a new site: <https://earlymodernculture.org>.

 

It is important to note that the resurrection of these old issues is not a "re-boot" of the journal since EMC 2.0 continues to reside at Clemson. Our purpose, simply, is to make available once again the many excellent papers and discussions from the top-notch scholars whose work graced the pages of this project in its first incarnation. We hope that this work will appeal not only to academic specialists but also to anyone interested in the early modern period.

 

Crystal Bartolovich, Syracuse University

David Siar, Winston-Salem State University (retired)