Presented by Jennifer Farooq and chaired by Alison Shell
This workshop will introduce GEMMS (Gateway to Early Modern Manuscript Sermons), which is a group-sourced online bibliographic database of early modern (1530-1715) manuscript sermons from the UK, Ireland and North America. GEMMS is freely accessible and fully searchable and currently contains records of over 20,000 sermons and sermon notes from more than 70 libraries and archives. We will explore the range of materials included in GEMMS and the various ways users can search the database. As scholars have increasingly recognized the importance of sermons in early modern society and culture, we also will consider how manuscript sermons could be useful for a variety of research projects, including not only religious topics, but also work on book history and ownership, manuscript transmission, cultural exchanges, genre studies, women’s history, the lives of children, social networks, political history, and even the history of science.