Please mark your calendars for a special event celebrating the work of our colleague Steven Zwicker. On Friday, April 8, Steve will give a talk titled “'The Trouble with Friends and Relatives': John Milton in Collaboration” (read full abstract).

Derek Hirst, Steve’s long-term friend and collaborator in the Department of History, will introduce the event. The talk will be followed by a reception. This is an occasion for us as a community to honor Steve’s contributions to the study of early modern literature, to our department and to the university—over the last 52 years.

This talk explores the ways of literary collaboration, of literary possession, of belonging to or with another—not the sort of exercise you might encounter in the study of Shakespeare’s plays where scholars armed with computers and algorithms determine which words Shakespeare wrote and which words his collaborators wrote for him, or together with him, or instead of him, or in addition to him.