Led by Lee Palmer Wandel, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Lia Markey, Newberry Library
This year-long seminar aims to form a community of graduate students who are in the early stages of working on their dissertations – formulating proposals or drafting early chapters – and who are enrolled in graduate programs in the schools that form the Newberry’s Center for Renaissance Studies’ consortium. We welcome dissertations on any aspect of medieval, Renaissance, or early modern European history, as well as the early modern Atlantic and Europe's connections to the Americas. Members of the seminar will have the opportunity to explore the Newberry's rich collections, as well as to offer and receive comments and criticisms from scholars in other disciplines who are working with different kinds of sources and pursuing different kinds of questions. Discussion will focus on methods, from a range of disciplines, with an eye to helping members integrate and analyze material and visual materials in their studies.
Note that the seminar will meet in the morning of four Fridays over the 2017/2018 academic year and will also include virtual meetings and exchanges. The seminars are scheduled for the same days as the Newberry Seminar in European Art; all participants in the Dissertation Seminar are invited to remain at the Newberry in the afternoon to attend these presentations by scholars: Newberry Seminar in European Art
The seminar is limited to 12 participants, but is open to all graduate students in the early stages of their dissertation who have written at least a proposal and/or first chapter. Students need not be ABD. Preference is given to applicants near the beginning of their dissertation research to those who are completing the writing. Priority will be given to students from Center for Renaissance Studies consortium institutions.