Huntington Library Quarterly

The editorial board of the Huntington Library Quarterly is staffed by sixteen eminent scholars of early modern art, literature, history, science, medicine, and material culture. They represent the best of what has made the HLQ a highly valued journal among researchers in the US, Britain, and beyond, with more than 150,000 annual article downloads. They also signal a new direction for the HLQ, which is expanding to embrace broader and more diverse fields of inquiry, including scholarship rooted in continental Europe, the African Diaspora, and the Indigenous Americas, informed by critical approaches to colonialism and power in the early modern world. As advisors and advocates, they will help guide the journal’s new editor, Brett Rushforth, as he leads the HLQ from its headquarters at The Huntington.

For more information about individual board members, click on their names below.

Susan Cogan, Utah State University
Elizabeth Ellis, Princeton University
Lynn Festa, Rutgers University
Douglas Fordham, University of Virginia
Stefan Hanss, University of Manchester
Katherine Ibbett, Oxford University
Peter Mancall, USC and EMSI
Shannon McHugh, University of Massachusetts, Boston
Jennifer L. Morgan, New York University
Jennifer Mori, University of Toronto
Noémie Ndiaye, University of Chicago
Nicholas Popper, William & Mary and Omohundro Institute
Nicholas Radburn, Lancaster University
Andrés Reséndez, University of California, Davis
Ulinka Rublack, Cambridge University
Cristobal Silva, University of California, Los Angeles

Volume 88, Number 1-2, Spring/Summer 2025

“New Directions for the HLQ”

Brett Rushforth, 1-3

“‘The Mysteries of Apalache’: Tall Tales and Lost Worlds in the Early American South”

Owen Stanwood, 5-38

In 1658, Charles de Rochefort published a description of Apalache, an Indigenous polity located in southeastern North America that had welcomed French and English refugees. Usually dismissed as a tall tale, Rochefort’s account has never been thoroughly analyzed. The story demonstrates how Europeans in the early period of colonization understood America as a place of wonder and inspiration. In addition, one can learn how information (and misinformation) traveled across the Atlantic. Rochefort probably patched his tale together from various oral sources, including some that came from Indigenous Americans. As a result, Rochefort revealed a lost world of stories and shows the myriad ways Europeans tried to make sense of America.

“Sun Worship in the Early Modern English Colonial Imagination”

Sophie Battell, 39-58

This article presents a decolonial analysis of the figure of the Indigenous sun worshipper in early modern literature. Drawing on a wide range of ethnographic sources, I show how the sun worshipper emerges as a privileged figure in discussions of Native religious practices. Sun worship was frequently condemned and ridiculed in contemporary discourse, but this analysis of plays such as Shakespeare’s The Tempestand Fletcher’s The Island Princessoffers a more nuanced view. These texts alert us to the violence of colonial encounter and the literary dispossession of Indigenous practitioners of their spiritual connections to the cosmos and the celestial bodies.

“Escaping Rumor in the Mexican Inquisition”

Daria Berman, 59-86

This paper investigates the methodology of analyzing gossip and rumor in the Mexican Inquisition trial of the alleged Judaizer Simon Lopez de Aguarda in the 1640s. Through close reading of witness testimony and arrest orders, I challenge the idea that inquisitors had unquestionable evidence against individuals accused of heresy. Rather, these trials hinged on unreliable fama publica, or village gossip, transformed into what I term a “legal rumor”: the selective and often creative synthesis of fama publica supporting in an arrest order. The contributions of Lopez’s testimony written in his own handwriting is a unique feature of his trial that allows historians to see how the inquisition worked behind the scenes to distort witness testimony to produce a guilty verdict. The study of this trial suggests a new methodology for researching inquisition trials by following how narrative shifted throughout the procedures and how historians can engage with these rich but convoluted sources.

“Rhetorical Rebound: Disabling Critique in Richard III”

Pasquale Toscano, 87-118

Although the body of Shakespeare’s Richard III has been a long time object of ableist contempt, disability scholars have, in the twenty-first century, shown it to be far more than symbolic of a villainous mind. Why, then, spend further time on Richard’s physique? Often, he is still understood as the only disabled–or “unnatural”–one in the play, despite the fundamental instability of the category of disability. Many contemporary theorists have stressed just this. The present article argues that Richard anticipates their insights. He turns the rhetoric of somatic aberrance against his accusers, insists that his antagonists are just as unnatural as he, and nabs the English crown for his efforts. Recognizing this strategy shines new light on the play’s most confusing scenes, as well as its latent political commentary. At a time when polemicists were describing the aged female sovereign as “unnatural, Shakespeare reveals not only that the flexibility of this label undercuts its usefulness, but also that political discourse reduced to individual bodies unleashes cycles of insult in which only the most shameless calumniators prevail. What is more, attending to these cycles in Richard IIIprepares us for their more complicated iterations in Shakespeare’s later plays–and by extension, his iconoclastic tragic technique.

“‘A Disposition to Laziness’: Visions of Cockaigne in the English Atlantic World”

Daniel Johnson, 119-148

Originating in medieval Europe, the mythical land of Cockaigne frequently appeared in English literary texts between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Particularly prominent in works on the Americas, images of the medieval folk utopia served a variety of ideological purposes, from lamenting the innate laziness of the masses and encouraging emigration to ridiculing the colonial project as a ruse to fool the credulous. Analysis of these disparate images provides an informative and unique lens through which to explore changing attitudes about human nature and the meaning of work in early modern England and America.

“How Menocchio’s Ordeal Began: Clerical Sex Abuse and the Catholic Church in the Sixteenth and Twenty-First Centuries”

Virginia Reinburg, 149-167

Historians, teachers, and students of early modern Europe and the Reformation know Carlo Ginzburg’s The Cheese and the Worms(1976), a brilliant account of the heresy trials of Domenico Scandella, called Menocchio, before the Roman Inquisition. Ginzburg drew an unforgettable portrait of one peasant intellectual’s bold defense of his original ideas before the inquisitors. This essay calls attention to the role of clerical sex abuse in setting Menocchio’s trial in motion. The essay joins recent work by historians reexamining past events that today would be considered sex abuse. Spotlighting clerical abuse of power, including sexual abuse, sheds light on dynamics of power and resistance in sixteenth-century Europe.

“Black Aquatics: Early Modern Past, Present, and Future”

Amanda Herbert and Kevin Dawson, 169-198

This article introduces the public humanities project Open Water: Histories of Afroaquatics, which combines original early modern research with community outreach and education to address contemporary racial inequities in aquatic activity and safety. The authors trace how early modern manuscripts, books, images, and material culture–largely produced by Europeans–both documented and distorted the aquatic expertise of Black communities in Africa and the Americas. Reconstructing these suppressed histories, the authors reveal that early modern Africans were celebrated for their proficiency in swimming, diving, fishing, and boating, as well as for developing sophisticated water-based healing practices. These traditions, rooted in spiritual and medicinal relationships to water, were often appropriated and misrepresented by Europeans to serve the interests of enslavers and colonizers. Over time, these distortions fed inaccurate historical narratives that have reduced Black participation in aquatic activities and increased the risk of Black drowning. Through partnerships with educations, artists, and youth organizations in the U.S. and Britain, the Open Water project reclaims these histories for the communities from which they were taken. By connecting the early modern archive to present-day social justice work, the authors demonstrate how historical scholarship can move beyond recovery toward repair, transforming inherited narratives of exclusion into acts of collective remembrance and revitalization.

Past issues can be accessed via Project Muse.

HLQ Call for Submissions:

The Huntington Library Quarterly (HLQ) is a peer-reviewed journal featuring original research and new perspectives on the early modern period, broadly defined (c. 1400–1800). Its content reflects an early modern world that was connected and cosmopolitan, with diverse communities and cultures increasingly linked by the circulation of people, ideas, social practices, and material objects in ways that transcend disciplinary and geographic boundaries. We invite submissions that draw on the sources, methods, and theoretical frameworks of literature, art, history, science, medicine, material culture, music, performance, and critical cultural studies, with a preference for scholarship that is broadly legible across disciplines.

HLQ’s historical focus on Britain and its American colonies has been dramatically expanded to embrace broader and more diverse fields of inquiry, including scholarship rooted in continental Europe, the African Diaspora, and the Indigenous Americas, as well as their intersections with Mediterranean, Pacific, and Indian Ocean worlds.

HLQ publishes four types of essays:

1. Research Articles: Standard essays based on original research and interpretation in conversation with current scholarship. (8,000–15,000 words, including notes.)
2. Sources: Short critical editions of previously unpublished textual or visual sources, translated into English when applicable, with a full critical apparatus and interpretive intervention.
3. Assessments and Approaches: State-of-the-field, methodological, and theoretical essays that assess recent scholarship, reimagine older works from new perspectives, or suggest new directions for research. (3,000 to 10,000 words, including notes.)
4. Early/Modern Connections:  Essays presenting original early modern research that has enabled, supported, or shaped a specific public humanities or public interest project. (2,000 to 10,000 words, including notes.)

We also publish special issues—similar to edited book volumes—in which a group of essays connected by a common theme, topic, or approach is submitted collectively, with an introduction, by an editor or editors. If the issue is accepted for publication, the submitting editors become guest co-editors of the issue.

HLQ is published by The Huntington, a world-leading research center with vast early modern holdings in its Library, Art, and Botanical divisions. Although the journal welcomes submissions that draw directly on these resources, the location of research or source material has no influence on publication decisions.

Call for Submissions: Early/Modern Connections

The Huntington Library Quarterly (HLQ) invites submissions for a new section of the journal called Early/Modern Connections. This section will feature peer-reviewed essays that link early modern research to public humanities and the public interest. Although examples will vary widely, all successful submissions will illustrate how previously unpublished research in early modern sources has informed, or continues to inform, a public-facing project. Work benefiting historically underserved or marginalized communities is of particular interest. Essay length will vary significantly by project but will generally not exceed 5,000 words.

We anticipate submissions highlighting smaller-scale individual work as well as collaborations between scholars and performers, educators, activists, writers, artists, and public-serving institutions. We also anticipate the unanticipated and encourage anyone interested in submitting an Early/Modern Connections piece to contact the journal’s editor, Brett Rushforth.

The Huntington Library Quarterly announces a new editor in chief and editorial board

Two Distinguished Scholars Join Huntington’s Research Division

Brett Rushforth, 1-3

Owen Stanwood, 5-38

In 1658, Charles de Rochefort published a description of Apalache, an Indigenous polity located in southeastern North America that had welcomed French and English refugees. Usually dismissed as a tall tale, Rochefort’s account has never been thoroughly analyzed. The story demonstrates how Europeans in the early period of colonization understood America as a place of wonder and inspiration. In addition, one can learn how information (and misinformation) traveled across the Atlantic. Rochefort probably patched his tale together from various oral sources, including some that came from Indigenous Americans. As a result, Rochefort revealed a lost world of stories and shows the myriad ways Europeans tried to make sense of America.

Sophie Battell, 39-58

This article presents a decolonial analysis of the figure of the Indigenous sun worshipper in early modern literature. Drawing on a wide range of ethnographic sources, I show how the sun worshipper emerges as a privileged figure in discussions of Native religious practices. Sun worship was frequently condemned and ridiculed in contemporary discourse, but this analysis of plays such as Shakespeare’s The Tempestand Fletcher’s The Island Princessoffers a more nuanced view. These texts alert us to the violence of colonial encounter and the literary dispossession of Indigenous practitioners of their spiritual connections to the cosmos and the celestial bodies.

Daria Berman, 59-86

This paper investigates the methodology of analyzing gossip and rumor in the Mexican Inquisition trial of the alleged Judaizer Simon Lopez de Aguarda in the 1640s. Through close reading of witness testimony and arrest orders, I challenge the idea that inquisitors had unquestionable evidence against individuals accused of heresy. Rather, these trials hinged on unreliable fama publica, or village gossip, transformed into what I term a “legal rumor”: the selective and often creative synthesis of fama publica supporting in an arrest order. The contributions of Lopez’s testimony written in his own handwriting is a unique feature of his trial that allows historians to see how the inquisition worked behind the scenes to distort witness testimony to produce a guilty verdict. The study of this trial suggests a new methodology for researching inquisition trials by following how narrative shifted throughout the procedures and how historians can engage with these rich but convoluted sources.

Pasquale Toscano, 87-118

Although the body of Shakespeare’s Richard III has been a long time object of ableist contempt, disability scholars have, in the twenty-first century, shown it to be far more than symbolic of a villainous mind. Why, then, spend further time on Richard’s physique? Often, he is still understood as the only disabled–or “unnatural”–one in the play, despite the fundamental instability of the category of disability. Many contemporary theorists have stressed just this. The present article argues that Richard anticipates their insights. He turns the rhetoric of somatic aberrance against his accusers, insists that his antagonists are just as unnatural as he, and nabs the English crown for his efforts. Recognizing this strategy shines new light on the play’s most confusing scenes, as well as its latent political commentary. At a time when polemicists were describing the aged female sovereign as “unnatural, Shakespeare reveals not only that the flexibility of this label undercuts its usefulness, but also that political discourse reduced to individual bodies unleashes cycles of insult in which only the most shameless calumniators prevail. What is more, attending to these cycles in Richard IIIprepares us for their more complicated iterations in Shakespeare’s later plays–and by extension, his iconoclastic tragic technique.

Daniel Johnson, 119-148

Originating in medieval Europe, the mythical land of Cockaigne frequently appeared in English literary texts between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Particularly prominent in works on the Americas, images of the medieval folk utopia served a variety of ideological purposes, from lamenting the innate laziness of the masses and encouraging emigration to ridiculing the colonial project as a ruse to fool the credulous. Analysis of these disparate images provides an informative and unique lens through which to explore changing attitudes about human nature and the meaning of work in early modern England and America.

Virginia Reinburg, 149-167

Historians, teachers, and students of early modern Europe and the Reformation know Carlo Ginzburg’s The Cheese and the Worms(1976), a brilliant account of the heresy trials of Domenico Scandella, called Menocchio, before the Roman Inquisition. Ginzburg drew an unforgettable portrait of one peasant intellectual’s bold defense of his original ideas before the inquisitors. This essay calls attention to the role of clerical sex abuse in setting Menocchio’s trial in motion. The essay joins recent work by historians reexamining past events that today would be considered sex abuse. Spotlighting clerical abuse of power, including sexual abuse, sheds light on dynamics of power and resistance in sixteenth-century Europe.

Amanda Herbert and Kevin Dawson, 169-198

This article introduces the public humanities project Open Water: Histories of Afroaquatics, which combines original early modern research with community outreach and education to address contemporary racial inequities in aquatic activity and safety. The authors trace how early modern manuscripts, books, images, and material culture–largely produced by Europeans–both documented and distorted the aquatic expertise of Black communities in Africa and the Americas. Reconstructing these suppressed histories, the authors reveal that early modern Africans were celebrated for their proficiency in swimming, diving, fishing, and boating, as well as for developing sophisticated water-based healing practices. These traditions, rooted in spiritual and medicinal relationships to water, were often appropriated and misrepresented by Europeans to serve the interests of enslavers and colonizers. Over time, these distortions fed inaccurate historical narratives that have reduced Black participation in aquatic activities and increased the risk of Black drowning. Through partnerships with educations, artists, and youth organizations in the U.S. and Britain, the Open Water project reclaims these histories for the communities from which they were taken. By connecting the early modern archive to present-day social justice work, the authors demonstrate how historical scholarship can move beyond recovery toward repair, transforming inherited narratives of exclusion into acts of collective remembrance and revitalization.