RSA 2025: Laboring writers in the early modern world
We are seeking papers for a panel at RSA 2025 in Boston that address laboring writers--not so much writing as labor, but writers whose primary identity is as a laborer, peasant, artisan, or craftsperson from any geographic region. Such writers are often neglected in favor of courtiers and their clients. Indeed, some of how we conceive of “the literary” today is informed by the tastes of the ruling elite of the early modern period. This panel thus aims to recover non-elite voices of the past.