Over the last 5 years, I have visited Newberry Library numerous times for Center for Renaissance Studies (CRS) workshops, graduate conferences, and even an unconference! I found out about the CRS while working on my MA when my university’s wonderful consortium representative shared a call for participants for a workshop on the materiality of manuscripts. To be honest, I applied mostly out of curiosity and the opportunity to visit the Windy City. I remember being nervous on my way to the workshop because I suddenly felt accurately aware of my lack of knowledge of medieval manuscripts. My fears dissipated within the first 30 minutes of the workshop when I learnt that we would get to make parchment!
CRS has been offering more digital humanities and public engagement programs, which coincides with my current projects. With Dr. Cody Barteet, I am working on a project on Canadian stained glass involving archival research, digitization, and presentation of findings through exhibitions, essays, StoryMaps and Scholarship@Western, an open access digital repository. Acquiring practical knowledge and learning from the CRS team's experience with the Seeing Race Before Race exhibition in their research methods workshop last fall was particularly insightful!
One of the surprises when visiting Newberry is the opportunity to play with manuscripts! When I joined Christopher Fletcher's tour of Newberry during my first workshop, I struggled to wrap my head around the fact that this magical collection is available to the public! Every workshop I have attended has included a segment dedicated to physically interacting with books that are centuries old. It's a rare privilege to use those objects for research. A particular highlight for my inner Dante-nerd was getting the opportunity, as graduate conference organizer, to do a short book talk about a 16th-century copy of the La Commedia!
One of the many reasons I cherish my visits to Newberry is the opportunity to meet interesting people. The Art History department at my university is great, but it is focused on contemporary research, so I don't often get to discuss premodern things with my peers. I have helped organize the 2022 and presented at the 2024 graduate conferences, which was a delight as I got to meet and learn from other grad students and get an idea of the trends in premodern scholarship. Despite the large number of participants, the organizers and staff created a lively and safe space, encouraged questions and comments, and always had plenty of good food! I left this year's conference with new ideas and renewed motivation to finish my thesis soon!
CRS, for me, is defined by its wonderful staff, particularly Christopher Fletcher and Lia Markey! I joke about feeling like part of the team as I visit them every year but, in all honestly, CRS has been an instrumental part of my growth as a scholar. Looking back on how nervous I felt the first couple of times, it is easy to see much more comfortable I feel with my presence in scholarly environments. Thank you to the people at CRS and I look forward to my next visit!
Iraboty Kazi,
PhD Candidate, Department of Visual Arts
Western University, London, Ontario, Canada