Welcome to the blog for the Newberry Center for Renaissance Studies! We post about center programs; items in the Newberry collections of special interest to those involved in medieval, Renaissance, or early modern studies; and profiles of scholars coming to the Newberry to present talks or pursue their research in those areas of study. We welcome your comments.
One of the Newberry’s strongest collecting areas is that of history of the book and of printing, including over 2,200 incunables, books printed from the onset of movable-type printing in Europe through the year 1500.
The speakers for our Center for Renaissance Studies History of the Book lecture series are usually concerned with helping people to understand books and reading practices of the past and how those traditions have shaped the present day.
Next fall, for the first time ever, the Center will offer a Dissertation Seminar for Historians.
This Friday, March 9, at 2:00 p.m., we will discuss the paper “An Icon for Peter the Great: Linking Imperial Cartography and Sacred Topography,” by Elena N.
Last Friday the Center held its first-ever one-day Research Skills Workshop for Early-Career Graduate Students. Each year since the Center was founded in 1979, we have held ten-week graduate seminars at the Newberry, taught by consortium scholars in their fields of expertise.
I want to call special attention to an extraordinary opportunity for graduate students and recent postdoctoral scholars: the 2012 Warwick-Newberry Summer Workshop, to be held at the University of Warwick in Coventry, England, July 9 – 20.
If you can, please join us for the Center for Renaissance Studies 2011-12 Dante Lecture, on Friday, March 2, at 2:00 p.m.
This week, I want to spotlight two of the Renaissance gems of the Newberry collection, both English manuscript calligraphy books. During the Renaissance, calligraphic manuals helped their owners to master the elegant handwriting valued by humanists while also imparting moral instruction.
