Sarah’s project traces trace the ways that legal violence circulates in late Elizabethan and early Stuart culture: how do the images of justice function as cultural objects to shape, manipulate, or impose ideology on people? How did the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries reconcile the law’s violence with its ethical promises of justice and peace? And, in what ways did alternative expressions of law and justice provide space for a rekindling of trust in communities?

In order to deepen her book project on early modern literature and law, Sarah will have access to Folger’s vast collection of rare manuscripts, letters, wills, vendor agreements, family papers, editorial papers, commonplace books, sketches, engravings, broadsides, and portraits.The Fellowship is supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and other generous grants and endowments.