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Clandestine Communications in Early Modern England

By CREMS

Date and time

Fri, 6 Mar 2015 14:15 - 17:30 GMT

Location

Queen Mary University of London

Mile End Campus Law 1.12 London E1 4NS United Kingdom

Description

The art of letter writing and the letter as material object in early modern England have recently been the subject of increasing scholarly attention. This growing interest in letters may stem from its potential as a fruitful source of academic enquiry, especially given the broad social and cultural significance of letter writing in early modern England. Perhaps because of its very nature, one particularly fascinating and understudied form of the early modern letter has not received the attention it deserves: the secret letter. By analysing the diverse ways in which messages could be conveyed secretly from one person to another, it becomes possible to track clandestine ways of communication in the early modern period.

This half-day symposium will cover the art of secret communications in early modern England, ranging from the smuggling of letters, invisible ink and cipher codes, to methods of securing letters. Dr Nadine Akkerman (Leiden University) will start off the afternoon with her paper entitled 'Early Modern ‘Aesthetics of Enigma’: The Hidden Function of Codes, Ciphers, and Invisible Inks', followed by a Q&A session. After a short coffee break, Jana Dambrogio (MIT) and Dr Daniel Starza Smith (Oxford) will teach a two hour workshop on historic letter-locking, during which different techniques of built-in security devices in letters will be explained. Symposium attendees are invited to unlock, and subsequently fold and lock their own letters, following in the footsteps of (amongst others) Elizabeth I and her spymasters.

This CREMS event will take place on March 6 2015, 2:15 - 5:30pm, in Law 1.12 on Queen Mary's Mile End Campus. Because of the nature of the workshop, only twenty people can attend the afternoon.

Please note that you cannot access the Law Building from Mile End Road. Use Westfield Way, and look for the Novo Burial Ground. The closest tube station to the Law building is Mile End.

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