Hayley Cotter Awarded Kemble Fellowship in Maritime History from Huntington Library

Hayley Cotter, lecturer in the English Department and Writing Program, has been awarded the Kemble Fellowship in Maritime History from the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. The year-long fellowship will allow her to undertake research for her book project on the material history of early modern maritime law.

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Cotter’s project combines cultural history, legal history, and the history of the book. It proposes a theory of the texts of printed maritime law that circulated in Europe during the early modern period. Instead of considering these texts in a mere legal or political framework, it employs a holistic approach that investigates the bibliographical, material, visual, and textual significance of the laws and customs of the sea. Cotter believes that maritime law represents both a niche area of legal thought and one that had broad, transnational implications and that an appreciation of its material history can help researchers to better navigate the global turn in early modern studies.

Indeed, she says, “Maritime law unlocks the global Renaissance.”

In 2021, Cotter earned her doctorate in English literature from UMass Amherst. Her dissertation, completed under the direction of Joseph Black, investigated the historical and theoretical connections between early modern maritime law and English Renaissance literature.

The Kemble Fellowship will complement a short-term research fellowship awarded to Cotter by
the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, Germany.