Earle Havens

EARLE HAVENS is an internationally recognized authority on the history of the book, in particular print and manuscript culture of the late medieval and Renaissance periods. His recent research and publications focus on several areas: surreptitious printing and book smuggling within the Elizabethan Catholic underground; the history of reading, scribal culture, and manuscript circulation in the post-Gutenberg era; and the history of literary forgery. Havens earned his PhD in History and Renaissance Studies at Yale University and has served as a curator of over a dozen rare book, manuscript, and museum exhibitions. In addition to his role at the Sheridan Libraries, Havens is Visiting Associate Professor in the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute at JHU, and regularly teaches seminars on the history of the book and European cultural history to undergraduates and graduate students at Johns Hopkins. Dr. Havens is also Principal Investigator of The Archaeology of Reading in Early Modern Europe, a four-year digital humanities initiative funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which brings together an international team of scholars and technologists from JHU, University College London, and Princeton University. Together they explore the history of reading practices within a digital environment dedicated to extensive manuscript marginalia recorded in books owned by two Renaissance polymaths, Gabriel Harvey and John Dee.