Kraken-wrestling and other monster (mis)adventures
Deep in the weeds of chapter revisions, but looking ahead to talks in Chicago and Toronto.
Happy New Year, readers!
It’s been an intense few weeks of writing, chapter revisions, and the fearsome Kraken-task of making inquiries about image licensing permissions. My book contract for Humans: A Monstrous History allows up to 50 (50!) images, including some colour plates, so that’s a lot of emails and spreadsheetery.
To institutions that offer permissions-free images for all publications, I say: thank you!!!!
On Krakens, my chapter 1 and 2 drafts have been absolute horror movies. I couldn’t open the files without feeling shocked. I couldn’t read a single sentence without a paragraph-long dialogue bursting into my mind, starting with: “BUT WHAT ABOUT…?”
It was yucky - but it’s part of the process, a balletic duel that I’m wired to perform over and over again, one that makes me feel empowered and alive but also terrified at how much can’t go in one book, or be figured out in one short little life.
I’m a fan of multi-coloured felt-tips for annotating printouts. Tracing the argument? Magenta underlining. Tracking the beat-sheet or forward motion? Sky-blue. Content whack-a-moling for which I need to Open Books? Slime green - and so on.
What I noticed while doing this for chapter 1 is how many of my notes were green. It turned out that a lot of to-do items were high-level fact-checking tasks (leading to action and expansions in endnotes), not vast numbers of paragraphs to be written. Other annotations were where I needed more examples. OK - that’s a shopping-list, not a “brain transplant needed” nightmare. We can do this!
That was freeing!
Spring speaking engagements in Chicago and Toronto
In March, I’ll be heading west across the Atlantic for a few weeks. My first stop will be Chicago, IL, to attend the Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting. One of my talks there will be on a roundtable I organized: “The Early Modernist as Storyteller: trade-list creative/narrative nonfiction and the public sphere.”
I’ll be joined by four terrific writers and thinkers: Farah Bazzi, a historian of science who is writing a history and memoir of refugeehood; Leah Redmond Chang, author of Young Queens: Three Renaissance Women and the Price of Power; Nandini Das, author of Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire; and our chair, Tamara J. Walker, author of Beyond the Shores: A History of African Americans Abroad.
Early modernists have stories to tell, and not just about the fields of their training. Actions and thinking from the period 1300-1700 — slavery, colonialism, diplomacy, empire, migration, religion, science, image-making — have ongoing legacies. This panel brings together five authors who have published or who are writing trade-list history/memoir intended for a general readership. We’ll freewheelingly discuss the process and stakes of the early modernist as storyteller and cultural critic in the public sphere.
One theme of our conversation will be the art, craft, and techniques of storytelling: translating new topics, perspectives and historical figures for people who may be more used to tomes about allegedly great men and discrete, famous events.
We’ll talk about the stakes of the topics of our books: the choices and predicaments of women in power in Renaissance Europe; premodern categories for people (relating to gender, disability, monstrosity, and race); entangled commercial and diplomatic histories of Asia and Europe; understanding oneself as an archive; and how historical writing can function as a way to flee but also to understand present-day predicaments, particularly the connections between identity, place, and movement.
We’ll also speak to the importance of diverse voices in the public sphere. Authors of history books marketed for the general public have tended to skew white, male, and privileged, especially in political and imperial history, history of science, and works of broad scope (like the history of humanity). This panel challenges old stereotypes of what a historian looks and sounds like.
The Monster Collectors
![A printed ticket with the text: This ticket entitles [name] to a Sight of the BRITISH MUSEUM, at the hour of One on Wednesday the 3rd of March 1790. No Money is to be given to the Servants.” The name, day, and month are hand-written, as is a note at the bottom describing the ticket’s preservation.](https://assets.buttondown.email/8016e0a3-87a3-49e1-84e2-473e3c575a65_3609x2485.jpeg?utm_source=surekhadavies&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=kraken-wrestling-and-other-monster-misadventures "A printed ticket with the text: This ticket entitles [name] to a Sight of the BRITISH MUSEUM, at the hour of One on Wednesday the 3rd of March 1790. No Money is to be given to the Servants.” The name, day, and month are hand-written, as is a note at the bottom describing the ticket’s preservation.")
After Chicago, I’ll head to Toronto, ON, to give some talks at the University of Toronto. One of these will be “The Monster Collectors,” this year’s John Seltzer and Mark Seltzer Memorial Lecture, part of the 2023-24 Friends of the Fisher Library lecture series (28 March, 6pm, venue tbc).
In early modern Europe, collectors of books and of works on paper did not merely read about the wider world: some also assembled works of their own. In this lecture, I’ll tell the story of print and manuscript miscellanies (compendia) and geographical works produced in Europe by geographers, naturalists, and collectors. One of these was collectors was Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753), physician, President of the Royal Society, and owner of the founding collection of the British Museum. The miscellanies that collectors like Sloane assembled (or had assembled for them) were artefacts with which their owners puzzled through the boundaries (or lack thereof) between human, animal, and the idea of the monster.
After a few days in Toronto, I’ll be vacationing and seeing friends, and will gradually make my way down to Washington, DC in April, to see more friends and (doubtless) some amazing museum exhibits.
But first, back to the Kraken-duels of book writing. It will be a long and cold couple of months, but the shortest day of the season is noticeably behind me. Onward!
Links
Farah Bazzi, historian of science
Leah Redmond Chang, author of Young Queens: Three Renaissance Women and the Price of Power. For a free link to my review of Young Queens, click here.
Nandini Das, author of Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire
Tamara J. Walker, author of Beyond the Shores: A History of African Americans Abroad. For a free link to my review of Beyond the Shores: A History of African Americans Abroad, click here.
Appendix
Newsletter-platform-trialling shenanigans continue, off and on. For the moment, I’m sticking with my fall plan to re-launch the newsletter after my spring travels, rather than rushing through the changes now. This side of the big trip, my executive function is stretched very thin. But you won’t have to do anything: after my newsletter redesign, your subscription will be migrated over automatically and, as ever, you can unsubscribe at any time.
You can also find me on www.surekhadavies.org,
BlueSky (@drsurekhadavies.bsky.social),
and Instagram/Threads (@surekhadavies).