The English Renaissance represents a late blossoming of the general cultural rebirth in Western Europe characterized by the recovery of Greek and Roman classics, the celebration of the multifaceted individual, and a renewed emphasis on the secular world. Alternatively labeled the early modern period, this era also saw the voyages of Columbus, the development of the printing press, the Protestant Reformation, and the rise of centralized monarchies. English writers expressed the vitality and volatility of the Renaissance/early modern period in an outburst of prose, poetry, and drama that spanned the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth century. This quarter we will focus on travel literature, both actual and imagined, as it relates to early modern globalism. Possibilities include the accounts of Amerigo Vespucci and Thomas More’s Utopia from the sixteenth century to  accounts of a Bermuda shipwreck and William Shakespeare’s The Tempest in the seventeenth century. We will also consider the impact on English literature of travelers such as Leo Africanus and Pocahontas and the discourse that developed around them.