Transatlantic Team Turns Renaissance to Ghosts, Inns and Castles
A transatlantic team of researchers has won $323,000
(£190,000) to fund an innovative study of the Renaissance in
Europe and the Americas. Sponsored by The Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation, they will challenge past thinking which has restricted
the Renaissance to elite Europeans. The researchers will examine
the lives and beliefs of ordinary people in the Renaissance and how
Europe and the Americas shared Renaissance ideas. The team will
focus on those peoples’ religious and spiritual beliefs,
including notions of the afterlife, ghosts and witchcraft, and they
will also examine how those people interacted with the buildings
around them such as inns, schools, hospitals and castles.
The three-year collaborative programme brings together scholars in
Britain’s University of Warwick and the Newberry Library in
Chicago. The research programme, which will run from 2005 to 2008,
will attract historians, literature experts, linguists and
classicists from both sides of the Atlantic.
The UK partner in the programme is the University of
Warwick’s Centre for the Study of the Renaissance under its
Director, Professor Julian Gardner, and Professor Steve Hindle, who
will lead the first year of the research. The Centre has 33
specialists in Renaissance or early modern studies in a centre with
£1.3 million in funded research programmes.
The US partner is the Newberry Library’s Center for
Renaissance Studies, directed by Dr Carla Zecher, which will
co-ordinate the involvement of the Library and its international
consortium of 37 universities, which includes some of the premier
institutions in America’s Midwest.
The research programme, entitled ‘The Spaces of the Past:
Renaissance and Early Modern Cultures in Transatlantic
Contexts’, will study the extent to which the Renaissance,
normally seen as a phenomenon limited to the ‘high
elites’ of Europe, was experienced by the wider populations
of the two continents, such as women and the poor. The first year
of the project will centre on an investigation of the way those
ordinary people encountered the Renaissance in the buildings around
them – the castles, inns and schools. The programme’s
second year will be devoted to the exchanges of ideas between
Renaissance Europe and the Americas, especially colonial Spanish
America. The final year’s research will focus on the
period’s religious and spiritual beliefs – including
notions of the afterlife, ghosts and witchcraft.
Professor David VandeLinde, Vice Chancellor of the University of
Warwick, said, “I am delighted that The Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation has agreed to fund this exciting research project. I
believe that our work with the Newberry Library will strengthen
international scholarly collaboration in the Humanities and will
build on our ongoing commitment to academic excellence in this
field.”
The University of Warwick’s Professor Steve Hindle said,
“The Mellon Foundation’s decision to fund ‘The
Spaces of the Past’ is very important for the future of
Renaissance and Early Modern Studies. It will allow us to further
enhance our expertise here at Warwick and to greatly increase our
understanding of this crucial period in European and American
history.”
Professor Julian Gardner added, “As well as supporting
groundbreaking research, this collaboration will enable Warwick and
its American partners to enrich substantially their graduate
training programmes and to build new transatlantic
alliances.”
From Charles Cullen, President of the Newberry Library: "This
project will take full advantage of the strengths of both the
Newberry Library and Warwick's well-known Centre for the Study of
the Renaissance. The programme will draw the attention of British
and European scholars and students to the Newberry's rich resources
available for Renaissance and early modern studies."
From Carla Zecher, Director of the Newberry's Center for
Renaissance Studies: "This collaboration offers an ideal
combination of teaching students not only traditional research
methods, but also the latest disciplinary developments. It will
allow the University of Warwick and the Newberry Library to
accomplish goals that neither institution can achieve alone."
For further information contact:
Professor Steve Hindle, Centre for the Study of the
Renaissance
University of Warwick Tel: 024 76 5724914
Steve.hindle@warwick.ac.uk
Peter Dunn, Press and Media Relations Manager
University of Warwick Tel: 024 76 523708
p.j.dunn@warwick.ac.uk
Dr Carla Zecher
Director, Center for Renaissance Studies
The Newberry Library Tel: (312) 255-3565
zecherc@newberry.org