t the University of Wisconsin at Madison there is a long tradition of excellence in the field which we now call "early modern," a term which denotes a chronological moment that is not confined to national boundaries.

Indeed, the very notion of the early modern defies and challenges the emergence of national boundaries and cultural hegemonies that it was the burden of the various European "renaissances" to define. It also challenges, of course, the limitations of "renaissance" as strictly European.

Those of us who work in early modern texts, images, religion, philosophy, history, and science increasingly believe that locating and defining the origins of "modernity" must be undertaken in an interdisciplinary context that both interrogates and reaches beyond the borders of Europe.

Early Modern societies defined themselves in ways that marked out but also challenged borders and boundaries as they shaped their communities (including intellectual as well as religious and political communities of interpretation and belief), individual identity, and the understanding of modernity.

Such concerns distinguish distinguishes us from those working in Medieval Studies and from those working in contemporary studies.

It also insists that we familiarize ourselves with the relationships among countries and continents to a degree that is not possible within the framework of our individual departments, or within the frame of "Renaissance studies" when it is understood as focusing largely or entirely on Humanism and the revival of classical learning within Europe.

The process of colonialism, the economics of the slave trade, the work of missionaries, the impact of the reformation on rural communities, the significance of popular culture, the engagement between Islamic and Christian societies: such social, economic, and cultural upheavals demand a comparative and interdisciplinary vocabulary that it is the purpose of early modern studies to develop and refine.