In the past decade, seventy-five different Guest Authors have published over one hundred posts in The Collation. Roughly half of these contributors wrote posts about their experiences working with the Folger collections and researcher community through Institute-sponsored programming.
Many fellows took this opportunity to share an “in progress” look at their research—what they were learning, what was surprising, and what was still challenging—and to showcase the materials they examined while in residence.… Continue Reading
Posts Categorized: Programs
A guest post by Breanne Weber and Tamara Mahadin
In the midst of a pandemic, participants of the Folger Institute’s “Orientation to Research Methods and Agendas” gathered in a virtual seminar space this summer.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic halted access to the archives in institutional libraries, this year’s seminar, in collaboration with Pennsylvania State University, was a different, yet eye-opening, experience.… Continue Reading
A guest post by Dr. Ruth Ahnert
In July 2017 the Folger Institute welcomed participants and faculty to the third of its Early Modern Digital Agendas (EMDA) gatherings—an NEH-funded Institute for Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities. The EMDA institutes train early modern scholars in digital methods, digital tools, and theoretical frameworks, exposing them to the latest methods and thinking in the field, with faculty drawn from academia and beyond.… Continue Reading
The Folger Shakespeare Library is many things: an internationally-renowned research library, a museum, a performance space, a center for innovative digital initiatives, and home to some of the best air conditioning on Capitol Hill (not something to be overlooked during our sticky Washington, D.C. summers). But it’s also a classroom, or even many different kinds of classrooms: education is central to the Folger mission, and every year the Folger offers hundreds of programs designed for all kinds of classrooms, from bright, lively elementary-school homerooms to spare, echoing college lecture halls, and from traditional school-houses filled with desks and chalkboards, to pioneering online learning communities populated by students from around the world.… Continue Reading
This is the story of how a tweet can grow into an amazing scholarly resource. (And it ends with a plea for you to help!)
Just over a year ago, in January 2013, I was looking through the Folger’s collection of Greek texts so that I could find works for a course assignment on describing books. (My intent was to drum into them the necessity of looking at books as an activity that is separate from reading them—and what better way to do that than to ensure that they’re in a language they cannot read?)… Continue Reading
Anyone who has been a Fellow at the Folger Shakespeare Library can attest to the central role that Carol Brobeck plays as the Fellowships Administrator in making their work possible. She has also worked with scholars and staff on four exhibitions, most recently “Impressions of Wenceslaus Hollar” in 1996 and “Lost at Sea” in 2010. Here Carol gives a sense of her history at the Library, an account of the Fellowships program, and offers some advice for applicants. … Continue Reading
Last week I wrote about two students who worked on (two different copies of) the same book. But looking over the 64 texts that the 66 students I’ve taught over the last five years (in eight different seminars), I’m struck by the wide range of works that students have been drawn to. In general, I require students to work on a book printed before 1700 (though I sometimes make exceptions to that rule depending on their research interests) and written in a language that they can read.… Continue Reading
As I’ve written about before, in my Undergraduate Seminars students devote the bulk of their research time to crafting a biography of the book they’ve chosen as their primary focus. They find out who wrote the book and who printed and published it, they speculate on who the book’s intended audience was and on how the book might have been received, and they trace the afterlife of the book through the owners of their copy and the later editions and translations of their text.… Continue Reading
A guest post by Folger Institute participant and short-term fellow Lehua Yim
Sixteenth-century England was particularly formative in the long history of what “Britain” means for the peoples of that archipelago, as reformulations of political, legal, economic, and religious institutions added complexity to the webs of relationships that structured that society. Of particular interest to me are the shifts and innovations regarding rights to waters and lands in the history of real property.… Continue Reading
Georgianna:
Did you ever wonder why or how we borrow items to show in our exhibitions at the Folger? Let’s use the upcoming “Shakespeare’s Sisters: Women Writers, 1500-1700,” opening on February 2, 2012, as an example. My colleague Caryn Lazzuri and I have been working on this exhibition for almost two years. As the curator of this exhibit, I’ll begin by talking about why we borrow, and Caryn will follow up on the “how” in her role as Exhibitions Manager.… Continue Reading
