October 1, 2010: UNH English Department Speakers Series presents Adam McKeown, Tulane University 
Join us for a presentation by UNH alumnus Adam McKeown, now an Assistant Professor of English at Tulane University. Prof. McKeown will present a paper titled "Cities on a Hill: Boston, Quebec, and the Shape of Community in Colonial North America."
Samuel de Champlain and John Winthrop came to the New World wtih ideas about the form and function of community that derived from their experiences in Europe, not all of which were sustainable in North America. In the considerable writings they left behind, we can trace the changing shape of Quebec and Boston in response to the pressures of the larger colonial projects of which they were part, but we can also trace in these writings the efforts of two community-builders--each with strong and very different convictions--to reconcile the community that was taking shape in North America to their ideas of what a community was, what it should look like, and what it was supposed to do.
Adam McKeown teaches and writes on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English and Trans-Atlantic literature. His particular areas of interest are visual culture, community, and rhetoric, and he has recently published articles on these topics in The Sidney Journal and Studies in English Literature. His book, English Mercuries: Soldier Poets in the Age of Shakespeare (Vanderbilt, 2009), studies community and the militarized state through the perspective of Elizabethan war veterans who came home to carve out literary careers. His current book project focuses on community and borders, and it traces in the literature of the seventeenth century how changes to the physical definitions of the city, county, and country altered early modern ideas of community. He teaches a wide range of undergraduate and graduate courses on the Renaissance and the early modern period. His Ph.D. is from New York University and his B.A. and M.A. are from the University of New Hampshire.
The University of New Hampshire English Department Speakers Series sponsors Professors of English and other disciplines from various academic institutions for a visit to UNH during which they present a current paper and discuss their research. This event is free and open to the public. Please contact the UNH English Department for more information about this event: (603) 862-1313.
If you would like to learn more about Prof. McKeown's research interests please visit his Tulane University website: Adam McKeown - Tulane University
