Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 5, No. 0435. Monday, 16 May 1994.
From: Hardy M. Cook <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Monday, May 16, 1994
Subject: The Folder Institute: Fall 1994 and Spring 1995
The Folger Institute
*****
Fall 1994 Seminars
Deadline for Consortium Grants and Early Admission: 1 June.
Final Deadline for Admission: 1 September.
"Analogies of State and the Political Subject in Shakespeare's Romances,"
directed by Constance Jordan, Professor of English at the Claremont Graduate
School. This seminar will center on Shakespeare's representations of domestic
and political government and on such topics as monarchic authority, the liberty
of the subject, obedience, conscience, contract, properly, free speech, and
servitude. Shakespeare's romances will be read with works by James I and
Francis Bacon, Coke's Reports and Institutes, Parliamentary record, and
accounts of the Virginia colony. Dates: Thursdays, 1 :00 to 4:30 p.m., from 29
September to 8 December, except 24 November.
"A Presse Full of Pamphlets: Books as Events, 1637-1660, " directed by Michael
Mendle, Associate Professor of History at the University of Alabama. Sponsored
by the Folger Institute Center for the History of British Political Thought,
this seminar will consider the institutional circumstances that shaped how
political books appeared, were distributed, were read, and were understood as
deeds. Texts will include the Eikon Basilike, Henry Parker's Observations, the
little tracts of 1641, and literature of the royalist campaign of 1642-43.
Dates: Fridays, 1 :00 to 4:30 p.m., from 23 September to 9 December, except 11
and 25 November.
"The O-Factor: Voice, Media, and Community in Early Modern England," directed
by Bruce R. Smith, Professor of English at Georgetown University. This seminar
will attend to early modern ideas about speaking and listening; address the
ways in which such media as handwriting, printing, musical notation, and
pictures vary in representing the human voice; discuss some recent forays into
post-phenomenology; attempt an acoustical reconstruction of the Globe theater;
and argue about the political implications of hearing versus seeing. Dates:
Fridays, 1:00 to 4:30 p.m., from 23 September to 9 December, except 30
September and 25 November.
"Renaissance Paleography in England, " directed by Laetitia Yeandle, Curator of
Manuscripts at the Folger Shakespeare Library. Designed to provide
introductions to English handwriting of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
and to the manuscript collections of the Folger Shakespeare Library, this
skills course will also offer opportunities for participants to discuss textual
problems encountered in their own manuscript work. Dates: Thursdays, 1:00 to
3:00 p.m., 29 September to 8 December, except 24 November.
"The Material Renaissance, 1400-1700, " directed by Sheila ffolliott, Associate
Professor of Art History at George Mason University. This colloquium, moving
across interdisciplinary and geographical boundaries, will consider the social
role of the object, particularly through collecting, display, and exchange, in
the age of the wunderkammer. Sessions will provide a forum for discussion of
participants' work-in-progress as well as of joint readings and "lookings."
Dates: One Thursday each month, 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., beginning 22 September.
***** The Folger Institute Evening Colloquium. Papers are solicited on any
topic of interest to scholars of the early modern period. Carol Hall of Howard
University, Denise Albanese of George Mason University, and Terry Murphy of The
American University review submissions, select those to be offered, and set the
schedule. Registrants receive papers in advance of the monthly sessions. Phone
for details.
***** Spring 1995 Seminars
Deadline for Consortium Grants and Early Admission: 1 September 1994. Final
Deadline for Admission: 6 January 1995.
"Researching the Renaissance, directed by Leeds Barroll, Professor of English
at the University of Maryland at Baltimore County. Designed specifically for
doctoral candidates whose dissertation work would benefit from use of the
Folger Library collections or from discussions of the methodological and
theoretical issues involved in interdisciplinary scholarship, this seminar will
offer both group discussions and individual consultations. Dates: Fridays, 9:00
to 11:00 a.m., from 27 January to 14 April, except 17 and 24 March.
"Art and Humanist Culture at the Time of Lorenzo the Magnifcent, " directed by
Charles Dempsey, Professor of Italian Renaissance and Baroque Art at The Johns
Hopkins University. Attempting to attain a closer understanding of the visual
arts as an integral part of the general cultural endeavors sponsored by Lorenzo
the Magnificent, this seminar on the works of Botticelli, Ghirlandaio,
Signorelli, and the Lippis (among others) will incorporate historical and
literary texts and analysis and humanist scholarship in reconfronting the
question of the "Renaissance" itself. Dates: Thursdays, 1:00 to 4:30 p.m., from
2 February to 13 April, except 30 March.
"Encounters with Antiquity: The Search for the Past and the Art of History from
the Renaissance to the Enlightenment," directed by Donald Kelley, Professor of
History at Rutgers University. Among the issues to be considered in this study
of the practice and theory of history are the roles of humanism and the
Reformation; problems of narrative; the discovery of the New World; the rise of
mythology; the "new history" of the Enlightenment; and the relations between
history and poetry, politics, and moral philosophy. Dates: Fridays, 1:00 to
4:30 p.m., from 27 Janualy to 7 April, except 3 March.
"The Victim in French Classical Tragedy, " directed by John D. Lyons,
Commonwealth Professor of French at the University of Virginia. The Christian
culture of early modern France celebrated Christ as a blameless victim; the
neo-Aristotelian poetics of French classical tragedy demanded strict causal
linkages between the victim's life and death. The seminar will consider this
opposition as the source for acute paradoxes in the theory of La Mesnardiere
and d'Aubignac and the practice of Corneille, Racine, Beze, Jodelle, and
Garnier. Dates: Thursdays, 1:00 to 4:30 p.m., from 26 January to 6 April,
except 16 March.
"Historical Difference/Sexual Difference," directed by Phyllis Rackin,
Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. Focusing on the
cultural implications of cross-dressing in plays by Shakespeare and his
contemporaries, this Center for Shakespeare Studies seminar will explore early
modern understandings of sex and gender. Issues will include the connections
between changing theatrical representations of cross-dressing and changing
conceptions of patriarchal authority, sexual difference, and personal identity.
Dates: Fridays, 1:00 to 4:30 p.m., from 27 January to 14 April, except 17 and
24 March.
***** Faculty Weekend Seminars
For those who find it difficult to commit themselves to the schedule of a
weekly seminar, the Center for Shakespeare Studies is sponsoring two weekend
seminars in the 1994-9S program. The advance preparation of those admitted to
the seminar, consisting of the submission of a work-in-progress, a report on a
pedagogical project, or a position paper relevant to the topic at hand, will
culminate in a series of sessions on a consecutive Friday and Saturday. Because
of the generous support of the National Endowment for the Humanities, there are
no seminar fees, and travel grants are available to a nationwide constituency
for these condensed and highly intensive seminars.
"Remember Me: Shakespeare and the Arts of Memory," directed by Stephen
Greenblatt, Class of 1932 Professor of English Literature at the University of
California, Berkeley. This seminar is concerned with memory and memorialization
in Shakespeare and in a tangled cultural history that extends from the ancient
world to the present. The two-day seminar will begin by addressing foundational
discourses, including the classic and medieval "arts of memory," Renaissance
sculptural and verse memorials, and the Christian practice of "anamnesis."
Centrally at stake is communal self-fashioning through memory, specifically the
proper management of traumatic memory. Participants will visit the Vietnam
Memorial and the Holocaust Memorial Museum, two of the most powerful sites of
collective memory in the United States. They will consider the languages
offered by memorials for addressing the problems of unbearable loss and will
sample contemporary theoretical literature on trauma and commemoration.
Discussion will finally turn to Shakespeare and especially to a tragedy
structured around traumatic memory, Hamlet. Friday and Saturday, 4 and 5
November. Application deadline: 1 June 1994.
"Contextualizing Writing by Early Modern Women," directed by Barbara Kiefer
Lewalski, W. R. Kenan Professor of English Literature and of History and
Literature at Harvard University. Despite the recovery and analysis of a body
of writings by early modern women, we still know very little about how they
read and wrote themselves and their world. This seminar will attempt to bring
their voices to bear on such issues as the ideology of absolutism and
patriarchy, the formation of subjectivity, the forms of authorial self-
fashioning, and the power of social and cultural institutions. The seminar
seeks to explore the theoretical, practical, and aesthetic problems involved in
attempting to contextualize more adequately the writings of early modern women.
And it asks the important question, "where should we go from here?" with such
studies. Friday and Saturday, 7 and 8 April. Application deadline: 1 September
1994.
***** Late Spring Seminar
"The Spectacle of the Court: The Stuart Masque, directed by Jerzy Limon,
Professor of English at the English Institute of the University of Gdansk,
Poland. This intensive seminar will consider the masque as a theatrical
spectacle, creating new conventions and revolutionizing staging techniques; as
a cultural construct, reflecting Stuart politics and ideology; and as an
element of courtly festival, illuminating larger cultural texts. Two research
projects will be proposed for joint publication. Dates: Thursdays, 9:00 a.m. to
12:00 noon, and Fridays, 1:00 to 4:30 p.m., from 1 June to 30 June. Spring
seminar application deadlines apply.
***** Conference set for 16-18 March 1995
Material London, ca. 1600
This conference, sponsored by the Folger Institute Center for Shakespeare
Studies, will under take a new view of the material structures and practices
that distinguished London during the period of Shakespeare's theatrical career.
The traditional associations of urban centers with the Renaissance, the
Reformation, the development of nationalized and bureaucratic political and
administrative systems, the process of democratization4 and the commercial
culture that spawned capitalism will be reevaluated, together with the early
modern roles of rural economies, country towns, local landowners, and
aristocratic taste.
Representing the fields of social, intellectual, urban, agrarian, literary, and
architectural history as well as archaeology and cultural anthropology, the
international panel of speakers includes Ian Archer of Keble College, Oxford;
Catherine Belsey of the University of Wales College of Cardiff; Peter Blayney
of the Folger Shakespeare Library; Alice Friedman of Wellesley College;
Patricia Fumerton of the University of California, Santa Barbara; Anthony
Grafton of Princeton University; Andrew Gurr of the University of Reading; Jean
Howard of Columbia University; Ann Rosalind Jones of Smith College; Derek Keene
of the Centre for Metropolitan History, London; Gail Kern Paster of George
Washington University; David Harris Sacks of Reed College; Jane Schneider of
the City University of New York; John Schofield of the Museum of London; Alan
Sinfield of Sussex University; Joan Thirsk of St. Hilda's College, Oxford; and
Peter Thornton of Sir John Soane's Museum.
The registration fee, set at S45.00, is due by 15 February 1995. Support from
the N.E.H. makes available grants-in-aid to reimburse travel and lodging
expenses for full-time faculty members. Application for travel grants must be
made by 6 January 1995. The conference meets Thursday evening, Friday, and
Saturday, 16, 17, and 18 March. To request a brochure, contact the Institute
offices.
***** Anniversary Marked 14-16 July 1994 Tyndale: Church, State, and Word
To mark the five-hundredth anniversary of the birth of the reformer William
Tyndale, the Tyndale Project, housed at the Catholic University of America, is
sponsoring a reinvestigation of the work and influence of the controversialist
and English translator of the New Testament and the Pentateuch. Drawing on
recent research in church history, political thought, and literary criticism,
the conference will meet Thursday, 14 July at Catholic University and Friday
and Saturday, 15 and 16 July, at the Folger Shakespeare Library.
Featured lectures include David Daniell of University College, London speaking
on "'Gold, Silver, Ivory, Apes, and Peacocks': Tyndale and Modern English" and
Anne O'Donnell of Catholic University speaking on "Erasmus and Tyndale as
Biblical Exegetes." Lodging is available on the CUA campus. For a brochure,
write to the "Tyndale Conference" in care of the conference organizer, Anne
O'Donnell, English Department, Catholic University, Washington, D.C. 20064. Or
phone (202) 319-5488.
***** Folger Exhibition Schedule: Visions of Shakespeare
Edwin Austin Abbey's Shakespearean Subjects. 20 June through mid-September.
Edwin Austin Abbey (1852-1911) was a prolific artist, known especially for his
Shakespearean subjects. Dazzling in its technicality and expressive power,
Abbey's work became familiar to a wide public through illustrations in Harper's
Monthly. Works displayed range from quick sketches in notebooks to large works
in oil, all based on Shakespeare's plays.
As a painter of Shakespearean subjects, Abbey was almost the last of his kind.
Literary paint ing, which had flourished in England for over a century, was
yielding with the Victorian aesthetic that had nurtured it to a spirit of
modernism. The genre has recently attracted renewed scholarly interest as a
record of a prospering middle class's interaction with literary and popu lar
culture.
This traveling exhibition, curated by Lucy Oakley, is gathered largely from the
collection of Abbey's work donated by his widow to the Yale University Art
Gallery. A catalogue published by the Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia
University will be available at the Folger Museum Shop.
***** Roasting the Swan of Avon: Shakespeare's Redoubtable Enemies and Dubious
Friends. Closes 4 June.
Also still available from the Museum Shop is the fully illustrated, 76-page
catalogue to the exhibition curated by Bruce R. Smith, Professor of English at
Georgetown University. The S14.95 edition is published by the Folger Library
with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Publication Fund.
***** Application Procedures
Application forms for admission to Institute programs are available from the
Institute offices. For those who are affiliated with member universities, forms
are also available from the campus representatives. Applications from
affiliates must be signed by the listed campus representative. All applicants
are requested to submit a current curriculum vitae and two letters of
reference. Of particular interest to the Institute's Application Review
Committee are the statements by applicants and their referees regarding the
relevance of the Institute seminar to the applicant's own program of research.
This application procedure does not pertain to conferences and colloquia with a
registration rather than an application deadline. Subject to space limitations,
submission of the listed registration fee will secure a place in conferences
and colloquia.
Registration Fees
Graduate students and faculty from the member institutions are admitted to
Institute seminars without charge; others are required to pay a registration
fee of $500 for semester seminars and skills courses. Conference fees cover
entertainment costs and are chargeable regardless of affiliation. Nominal fees
for the evening colloquia cover duplication expenses. This year's weekend
faculty seminars are sponsored by the N.E.H. and have no fee.
If You've Missed A Deadline
Inquiries concerning late applications are always welcome. Be warned, though,
that there are ceilings on seminar and workshop admissions as well as on
grant-in-aid awards, and that these may make it impossible to accommodate late
requests.
Grant-in-Aid Policies
1. Faculty and graduate students from affiliated universities may apply for
reimbursement of travel and lodging expenses, as well as for course reductions
in support of participation in programs sponsored by the Folger Institute or by
the Newberry Library Center for Renaissance Studies.
2. Full-time faculty from any American college or university who attend
programs funded by the N.E.H. and sponsored by the Center for Shakespeare
Studies may apply for N.E.H. at-large grants for reimbursement of travel and
lodging expenses.
3. In collaboration with the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies,
the Institute awards one $2,000 ASECS/Folger Institute fellowship each academic
year to a scholar conducting post-doctoral research in the period 1660-1815.
Preference is given to seminar participants.
4. A limited number of registration-fee waivers are available to independent
scholars.
***** Folger Library Guest House
For the convenience of visiting scholars, the Folger maintains a small Guest
House directly across the street from the Library. Single-room rates are $40.00
per night; doubles are $45.00. A limited number of apartments are also
available for monthly rental by readers. Accommodations are booked by the
Folger Library Registrar, David Ressa, who may be reached at (202) 6750306. Mr.
Ressa also maintains a list of other available lodgings in the Capitol Hill
neighborhood.
***** Further Information
More detailed descriptions of the programs can be obtained from the Folger
Institute offices at the Folger Shakespeare Library, 201 East Capitol Street,
S.E., Washington, D.C. 20003. Or phone (202) 544-4600, ext. 349. In requesting
information, please indicate if you would like to be added to the Institute
mailing list to receive future announcements.
