Pentecost. Case MS 185, f. 10
The Center for Renaissance Studies works with an international consortium of universities in North America and the United Kingdom. It offers a wide range of scholarly programs and digital and print publications based in the Newberry collection, and provides a locus for a community of scholars who come from all over the world to use the library’s early manuscripts, printed books, and other materials.
Faculty and graduate students from consortium institutions may be eligible to apply for Newberry Renaissance Consortium Grants to travel to the Newberry to attend programs or do research.
Through our reciprocal arrangement with the Folger Institute in Washington, DC, which also works with a consortium of universities, Institute seminar fees are waived for faculty and graduate students at Newberry Center for Renaissance Studies schools upon acceptance of application, in accordance with Folger policy and our agreement. Participants may be eligible to apply to their home institution to use Newberry consortium funds to travel to the Folger for programs or research, with authorization from their school’s Newberry committee.
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Upcoming Programs
Wednesday, September 6, 2017
Center for Renaissance Studies Programs
Free and open to the public; see below for a link to register.
John F. Kennedy was a voracious reader and he put his reading to work in his speeches.
Thursday, September 14, 2017 – Saturday, September 16, 2017
Early Modern Studies Program
Martin Luther to Muhammad Ali
Free and open to the public; see below for a link to register.
The third meeting under the general rubric of Politics of Conversion, this three-day conference at the Newberry is sponsored by Early Modern Conversions: Religions, Cultures, Cognitive, Ecologies, a multi-year SSHRC-funded project. The overall goal of the Politics of Conversion series is to develop new understandings within the following three areas of inquiry:
Saturday, September 16, 2017
Other Renaissance Programs
By invitation only
Annual meeting for the faculty representatives of the Center for Renaissance Studies consortium institutions. Additional details will be added later.
We invite participants to arrive early to attend our Symposium on Early Modern Studies, “Politics of Conversion,” September 14 to 16.
Saturday, September 16, 2017
Center for Renaissance Studies Programs
A new play by Rowan Williams
Free and open to the public; no registration required
While many theories surround Shakespeare’s “Lost Years,” between the time he left Stratford-Upon-Avon and his arrival in London, one centers on the possibility that he spent time in Lancashire as a teacher on the estate of Alexander Hoghton, a wealthy Catholic landowner, whose home was a safe house for Catholic priests under persecution from the crown.
Tuesday, September 19, 2017
Other Programs
Free and open to the public; see below for a link to register.
This fall the Lyric Opera of Chicago, in collaboration with the Joffrey Ballet, is mounting an exciting new production of the 1774 Paris version of Christoph Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice.
Wednesday, September 27, 2017 – Wednesday, December 6, 2017
Renaissance Graduate Programs
Ten-week Graduate Seminar
The application deadline has passed.
European Wars of Religion will be a journey into the excitement, division, chaos, and horror of religious reform and civil violence during the Wars of Religion in early modern Europe. The course will focus on cultural and social aspects of religious and civil conflict during the German Peasants’ Revolt, Dutch Revolt, French Wars of Religion, Thirty Years’ War, and British Civil Wars.
Friday, October 6, 2017 – Friday, April 20, 2018
Renaissance Graduate Programs
The application deadline has passed.
Led by Lee Palmer Wandel, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Lia Markey, Newberry Library
Saturday, October 7, 2017
Eighteenth-Century Seminar
Suvir Kaul, University of Pennsylvania
Thursday, October 12, 2017
Center for Renaissance Studies Programs
Wing Foundation Lecture Series on the History of the Book
Free and open to the public; see below for a link to register
Peter Stallybrass begins with a very simple proposition, although he hopes that it will have some surprising implications. The proposition is that the vast majority of letters written between the 1530s and the 1920s consist mainly of blank paper—and that they are designed to do so.
Friday, October 13, 2017
Renaissance Graduate Programs
Research Methods Workshop for Early-Career Graduate Students
The application deadline has passed.
As the successor to the Christian Middle Ages, the Renaissance is commonly known as a new age in which religion is dethroned and gives way to a secular outlook on the world and society.
Saturday, October 21, 2017
Center for Renaissance Studies Programs
Free and open to the public; no registration required
“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts …”
Sunday, November 5, 2017 – Monday, November 6, 2017
Center for Renaissance Studies Programs
A History of the Book Symposium
Free and open to the public; see below for a link to register.
The Newberry Library and Spertus Institute each house a rich collection of medieval and early modern Jewish manuscripts and printed materials, including two jointly owned books. This one-day symposium celebrates and examines these collections in relation to the social and religious lives of Jews from roughly 1300 to 1700. How did the shift to print affect Jewish thought?
Saturday, November 11, 2017
Milton Seminar
Laura L. Knoppers, University of Notre Dame
Friday, December 8, 2017
Seminar in European Art
Alison Stewart–Bible stories across faiths. How one artist survived the Reformation and designed Bible illustrations for school boys, cardinal, and king.
Lisa M. Kirch–Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Matthias Gerung’s Protestant and Catholic Title Page Designs
Saturday, December 16, 2017
Center for Renaissance Studies Programs
Free and open to the public; no registration required
It is Christmas night at the Windmill Inn, Shakespeare’s favorite pub in Stratford-Upon-Avon. While the Bard quaffs his favorite beverage at his usual table, he encounters a series of visitors, each with an unrealized dream and unanswered questions.
Saturday, January 13, 2018
Center for Renaissance Studies Programs
Free and open to the public; no registration required
“Let me have war, say I: it exceeds peace as far as day does night: it’s sprightly waking, audible, and full of vent. Peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy; mulled, deaf, sleepy, insensible: a getter of more bastard children than war’s a destroyer of men.”
Thursday, January 25, 2018 – Saturday, January 27, 2018
Renaissance Graduate Programs
The Center for Renaissance Studies’ annual graduate student conference, organized and run by advanced doctoral students, has become a premier opportunity for emerging scholars to present papers, participate in discussions, and develop collaborations across the field of medieval, Renaissance, and early modern studies in Europe, the Americas, and the Mediterranean world.
Friday, February 9, 2018
Seminar in European Art
Lisa Pon–The Plague on Paper in Early Modern Venice and Beyond
Simone Zurawksi–Architecture & Urban Development in the Reign of Louis XIV Reconsidered: Paris in the Aftermath of the Fronde
Saturday, February 10, 2018
Eighteenth-Century Seminar
Many Helen McMurran, University of Western Ontario
Friday, February 16, 2018
Renaissance Graduate Programs
Research Methods Workshop for Early-Career Graduate Students
The Edward E. Ayer Collection of rare books and manuscripts contained 4,000 rare colonial documents from New Spain when it was given to the Newberry Library in 1911.
Saturday, February 17, 2018
Center for Renaissance Studies Programs
Free and open to the public; no registration required
“Never were finer snares for womens’ honesties
Than are devis’d in these days; no spider’s web’s
Made of a daintier thread, than are now practis’d
To catch love’s flesh-fly by the silver wing”
Saturday, March 10, 2018
Renaissance Graduate Programs
Research Methods Workshop for Early-Career Graduate Students
In an influential article from 2004, Ken Jackson and Arthur Marotti heralded the turn to religion in early modern studies, a movement that has largely involved reading early modern literature through the lens of Continental philosophy. Yet well before this development, scholarship on early modern Englishwomen’s writing had already undergone its own turn to religion.
Friday, April 20, 2018
Seminar in European Art
Evelyn Lincoln–The Parasole Family Enterprise: the View from 1600
Aaron M. Hyman–Cut, Paste, Copy: Habsburg Cross-Cultural Craft in Vienna
Saturday, May 5, 2018
Center for Renaissance Studies Programs
Free and open to the public; no registration required
“ ‘I can see he’s not in your good books,’ said the messenger.
‘No, and if he were I would burn my library.’”
A staged reading by professional actors from The Shakespeare Project of Chicago, directed by Peter Garino.
Saturday, May 19, 2018
Milton Seminar
Stephen M. Fallon
Monday, June 4, 2018 – Thursday, June 28, 2018
Mellon Summer Institutes in Vernacular Paleography
At the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC
This four-week institute will provide an intensive introduction to reading and transcribing secretary and italic handwriting in the Tudor-Stuart period.
Monday, June 4, 2018 – Thursday, June 28, 2018
Mellon Summer Institutes in Vernacular Paleography
Mellon Summer Institute in French Paleography
This course will examine French manuscripts and archival materials from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century. The institute will provide a summary outline of the history of handwriting in France, followed by intensive training in reading from facsimiles, both in class and at home.