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.


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2021-2022 Programming Brochure

Upcoming Programs

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.
Friday, October 22, 2021 – Friday, May 20, 2022
Dissertation Seminar: The Translocal and the Transnational
This seminar provides an interdisciplinary, supportive community for graduate students in the early stages of dissertation preparation. The movement of people, things and ideas deeply shaped medieval and early modern literature, philosophy, art, music and culture.
Friday, November 19, 2021
Dante at 700: The Past, Present, and Future of Dante Studies
This virtual roundtable of local Dante specialists will take the various global celebrations of the Dante septcentenary as a starting point for a discussion of the state of the field. Cosponsored with Notre Dame’s Center for Italian Studies and Devers Family Program in Dante Studies and the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Chicago.
Friday, December 3, 2021
Introduction to Early Modern Critical Race Studies
This workshop introduces participants to the history and methods of Early Modern Critical Race Studies (EMCRS).
Thursday, January 6, 2022 – Thursday, March 10, 2022
Trans Historical: The Many Genders of the Past
All too often in popular culture and political media, trans people are misrepresented as “new”—an “invention” of our present moment. But trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming communities have a long and rich history.
Monday, January 17, 2022 – Saturday, January 29, 2022
2022 Multidisciplinary Graduate Student Conference #NLGrad22
Call for Proposals
Friday, February 11, 2022
Teaching the Early Modern Book: Ways of Seeing, Ways of Thinking
Participants in this full-day workshop will learn through examples about the constituent elements of books and how to “read” their meanings and significance.
Friday, April 8, 2022
Gage’s English-American: from Letter Press to WordPress
This workshop will explore the intersections of literary studies, digital humanities, and methods for sharing materials that are not born digital to a wide audience. To stage the conversation, we will use a 1648 publication by Thomas Gage, The English-American, housed in the Newberry’s collection, as a case study.
Thursday, April 14, 2022 – Friday, April 15, 2022
Processing the Pandemic I: Loss
Call for Proposals
Friday, April 22, 2022
New Spain at the Newberry Library: Demystifying Colonial Documents from the Ayer Collection
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.
Friday, May 6, 2022
Captured Objects: Studying Premodern Inventories
Inventories of premodern treasuries, collections, households, and libraries have long been crucial documents for art historians, historians, and literary historians. How should these seemingly straightforward lists be read, and what can they tell us about how individuals in premodern society conceived of the world?