Hybrid Format Brown Bag Colloquium: "Samuel Pepys’s World: Looking at his Diary from New Angles"

Professor, Heiko A. Oberman Chair, and Director of the Division for Late Medieval and Reformation Studies, University of Arizona, Ute Lotz-Heumann

April 26, 2023, at 12:30 PM

Ute Lotz-Heumann is Professor of History, Heiko A. Oberman Chair, and Director of the Division for Late Medieval and Reformation Studies at the University of Arizona. She specializes in the early modern history of Ireland, Britain, and Germany. Her first monograph on religious conflict and coexistence in Ireland was published in 2000. Her second monograph, German Spas in the Long Eighteenth Century: A Cultural History, appeared in 2021. She is also the co-author of a book on secularization in early modern Europe and a textbook on the historiography of the Reformation era. She has edited or co-edited eight volumes, among others A Sourcebook of Early Modern European History: Life, Death, and Everything in Between. Her current research focuses on holy wells and healing waters in early modern Germany and on the diary of Samuel Pepys.

Samuel Pepys’s Diary is one of the best-known primary sources for the history of early modern Britain and Europe. Pepys wrote a detailed account of his daily life between 1660 and 1669, and, in the process, witnessed the coronation of Charles II, the plague of 1665, the Great Fire of 1666, and the Second Anglo-Dutch War. Despite (or maybe because of) its richness, the diary has never been systematically analyzed. Rather, it has mostly been used as a quarry for information and quotes. In this paper, I will introduce my two new research projects on Pepys’s diary: first, an article (later to be expanded into a monograph) that takes the diary seriously as an early modern personal narrative and that takes as its starting point the question why Pepys kept a diary in the first place; and second, a digital humanities project that will explore Pepys’s social network and itinerary. As Pepys’s diary is set in London—an emerging colonial metropolis at the time—these projects will provide insights into Pepys’s world writ small and large.

This event will be offered in a hybrid format offering attendees the option to join virtually via Zoom or in-person in Chavez 406A.