Since 1981, the Center for Renaissance Studies has hosted multiple workshops, seminars, and institutes on interdisciplinary themes in the early modern period, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Notable past NEH programs include a series of workshops on Bibliography and Interdisciplinary Research and another series on Gender Studies in the early modern period.
From 2001 to the present the Center for Renaissance Studies has hosted several NEH-funded summer programs. Led by experts in fields such as history, music, and literature, these programs bring college and university instructors from across the nation together for lectures and discussions that address the intersection of major themes and topics in early modern studies in Europe and the Americas. Past programs have looked at the connections between revolution and identity, between travel writing and religion, and between music books and the social history of performance. The programs also provide the participants with an opportunity to engage with the rare source materials available in the Newberry’s collections.
Upcoming Program
There are currently no upcoming NEH-funded programs sponsored by the Center for Renaissance Studies.
Past Programs
In this interdisciplinary summer institute our goal will be to listen—literally and metaphorically—to travel. College and university teachers from across the nation will come together to explore the intersections between the history of travel and the history of music in early modern Europe and the colonial Americas.
Music Books in Early Modern Europe: Materiality, Performance, and Social Expression
Travel Writing, Skepticism, and Religious Belief in Renaissance Europe
French Travel Writing from the Americas, 1500-1800
Revolution and Changing Identities in France, 1787-1799
This six-week institute provided intensive training in the reading and editing of Spanish and Hispanic-American manuscript books and documents from the late medieval through the early modern periods. It also offered a thorough orientation to the archives, libraries, and manuscript collections available for work in Spanish and Hispanic-American studies. Twenty-five scholars participated.
While the field of gender studies is now established and burgeoning, the knowledge it produces is new and demands a re-evaluation of past accounts of cultural history. Many new insights, texts, and documents remain unknown to college and university professors throughout the country who would like to introduce gender studies into their classrooms.
Session 2: How to Create Castes in a Casteless Society: Lordship, Castes, and Society through Some Pyrenean Archives, 16th Centuries
Session 1: The Religious Roots of the Social Notions of Privilege, Fourteenth to Sixteenth Centuries
Republicanism and Literacy Culture in Mid-Seventeenth-Century England
Classicism and Absolutism in the Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century French Book. Session 2: The Illustration of Texts.
Classicism and Absolutism in the Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century French Book. Session 1: The Presentation of Texts.
Session 2: Women as the Root of All Evil
Session 1: Kings, Courtiers, and Countrymen
Session 2: How to Tell Editors from Actors and Verse from Prose
Session 1: Acting Scripts, Performing Texts
Session 2: Cultural Geography: Landscapes and Freedom in Western Art and Ideology
Session 1: Perishable Commodities: Value and Craft in Dutch Still-Life Painting
Learn more about the workshop leader: Keith Thomas, Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford, now emeritus
Learn more about Center for Renaissance Studies programs.
Session 1: From Alms to Bribes: The Gift in Sixteenth-Century France
Session 2: The Sources for Gifts: Archives and Fiction
Participants became familiar with the techniques of transcribing, identifying, and dating manuscripts of the late medieval and early modern periods.
Adjunct lectures
Scribal Practices in Twelfth-Century Continental Manuscripts
W. Braxton Ross, University of Chicago
Politics, Morality, and Religion in Early Modern Europe
In addition to teaching methods of reading and transcribing Latin and vernacular documents of Italian origin, Professor Billanovich provided an introductory bibliographical orientations to the collections housed in major Italian libraries and archives.
Matrimony and Patrimony in Early Modern Europe