A SPECIALIST in early modern British history, Assistant Professor of History Nicole Greenspan has as her focus the period of the British civil wars in the mid-17th century. This is the period of John Hampden and Algernon Sidney, the two men after whom the College takes its name, and more specifically the development of the news media, public debate, and political culture.

In 2005 her essay on “News, Intelligence, and Espionage at the Exiled Court at Cologne: Th e Case of Henry Manning” was published in the journal Media History (2005) and reprinted in the collection News and News Networks in Early Modern Britain and Europe, edited by Joad Raymond (Routledge, 2006). The article examines Manning, a spy who was apprehended, put on trial, and executed for treason in 1655. The trial records and many of his intelligence reports survive, and together they provide an excellent case study for the practice of early modern espionage. Greenspan’s “Religious Contagion in Mid-Seventeenth Century England,” published in Imagining Contagion in Early Modern Europe, which was edited by Claire Carlin (Palgrave, 2005), explores the position of Catholics in Protestant English society.

Greenspan, who began teaching at the College in 2006 with her B.A. degree from York University and M.A. and Ph.D from the University of Toronto, is currently working on a book on news and public debate in Britain in the 1650s and completing work on two articles, one on war and popular literature in early modern Britain, and the second on the political allegiance of royalist British exiles during the republican period (1649-1660).

BEYOND THE Classroom FOR THE Classroom
Hampden-Sydney College Faculty Scholarship 2005-2008
A report by the Office of the Dean of the Faculty