Center for Renaissance Studies Programs | Newberry

Center for Renaissance Studies Programs

Pentecost

Pentecost. Case MS 185, f. 10

The Center for Renaissance Studies works with an international consortium of universities in North America and Europe. It offers a wide range of scholarly programs and digital and print publications based in the Newberry collections, 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, D.C., 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.


Join our Mailing List and visit our Facebook page to learn more about our current activities and programs.


2020-2021 Programming Brochure

Upcoming Programs

Friday, October 9, 2020 – Friday, May 7, 2021
Dissertation Seminar: Gender, Power, Culture
This seminar provides an interdisciplinary, supportive community for graduate students in the early stages of dissertation preparation. Gender plays a critical role in understanding, displaying, and experiencing modes of power across a wide range of cultural activities, ca. 1100-1700.
Friday, November 13, 2020 – Tuesday, April 13, 2021
Race in Dialogue
The Center for Renaissance Studies (CRS) is pleased to announce a new series of virtual conversations on premodern critical race studies and Indigenous studies. Each hour-long session will feature a conversation between scholars across professional generations about foundational works and the current state of the field. See below for a full list of session topics and speakers.
Monday, January 4, 2021 – Monday, March 15, 2021
Renaissance Graduate Programs
Digital Humanities and Premodern Studies: An Introduction
Ten-Week Graduate Seminar
This virtual course will introduce you to methods, approaches, uses, and challenges of digital humanities with respect to the study of medieval and early modern cultures. Over the past few decades, scholars in all fields of medieval and early modern studies have increasingly used digital resources to study and teach the premodern past.
Thursday, March 18, 2021
Adventures in Libraries: Thoughts on Epistemology
A Roundtable on the Present and Future of Manuscript Studies
This virtual roundtable will reflect on the best practices and scholarly possibilities of the vital field of manuscript studies. As one of the pillars of the study of the medieval past, disciplines such as paleography and codicology will play a significant role in shaping the future of medieval studies, especially in an age of increasing digitization and calls for more accessibility.
Friday, March 19, 2021 – Friday, March 26, 2021
Renaissance Graduate Programs
Using Medieval Books
This virtual workshop explores typical problems and situations that engage the interest of medieval book historians. Through readings, discussion, and analysis of primary sources, participants will gain experience in a flexible, inventive methodology, and an understanding of how the study of surviving medieval books contributes to the study of medieval literary culture in general.
Friday, April 23, 2021
Restoration Theatre: Re-Activating the R/18 Repertoire
This workshop will guide participants through the process of developing theatrical productions out of their research interests. Part of a multi-year international project devoted to exploring the educational and commercial viability of the theatrical repertoire from the long eighteenth century, this workshop will focus in particular on Restoration and eighteenth-century performance research.
Saturday, April 24, 2021
Eighteenth-Century Seminar
Roxann Wheeler, Ohio State University
Anti-race, 1550–1760, Roxann Wheeler
Friday, May 7, 2021 – Saturday, May 8, 2021
Elemental Forces
This international symposium explores questions of early modern matter by focusing on the four elements (earth, air, water, and fire) and their properties, combinations, and transformations.
Thursday, May 13, 2021 – Friday, May 14, 2021
Documents from Colonial Mexico in the Ayer Indigenous Studies Collection
Inspired by the 500th anniversary of the conquest of Mexico, this symposium will explore how modern audiences can recover premodern Indigenous American voices and perspectives obscured by European colonization. A diverse group of researchers in art history, history, cartography, literature, and beyond will present items from the rich collection of colonial materials in the Edward E.
Tuesday, September 28, 2021 – Thursday, December 9, 2021
The World in the Book: 1300-1800
Center for Renaissance Studies Undergraduate Seminar
Centuries before television, smartphones, and social media, books were the primary means by which people made sense of the world around them. In cultures throughout the world, manuscripts and printed materials of all kinds were used to archive professional and personal lives, cultivate relationships with the divine, care for minds and bodies, and visualize faraway lands and peoples.