The Arthur F. Kinney
CENTER FOR INTERDISCIPLINARY RENAISSANCE STUDIES
The Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies, founded in 1998, is a research institution serving a dedicated community of scholars,
Students learn
students, artists, and the general public. Our mission is to support and promote interdisciplinary scholarship and public-facing humanities programming with the goal of exploring connections between the early modern world and our own. The Center cultivates original and timely research by gathering diverse scholarly communities at public conferences, workshops, lectures, classes, and performances. Our extensive research library is open to the public for use in our reading room, where rare book exhibits explore challenging historical and literary questions in accessible ways. The historical gardens and orchards on our 28-acre estate flourish as collaborative, hands-on laboratories for the study of the environmental humanities, past and present. New teaching agendas in the creative arts take shape on our outdoor stage, as artists in residence showcase productions of Renaissance and contemporary drama in the summer months. The theme, “The Renaissance of the Earth,� inspires our 2020 programming. Drawing together our gardens with the literary, botanical, agricultural, and
early modern printmaking
earth science materials in our special collections, interdisciplinary research teams will dig into the past for how we might imagine alternative forms of habitation and cultivation of the earth. I invite you to explore our current
...and calligraphy arts
and upcoming programs and welcome you, as well, to contact me with suggestions for future events. Marjorie Rubright, Director
umass.edu/renaissance 2
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‘ S HAKESPEARE, RACE, AND A MERICA... Photo- John Crispin
not necessarily in that order ’
Kim F. Hall, Lucyle Hook Professor of English,
The American Moor residency opened with a gallery exhibition entitled Othello Re-imagined in Sepia displayed in the Anne Greer and Fredric B. Garonzik Family
Professor of Africana Studies —Barnard College, Columbia University
Gallery, Mount Holyoke College. Professor, painter, and master printmaker Curlee Raven Holton engaged in a public conversation with actor and playwright Keith Hamilton Cobb on the topic: African American Perspectives on Othello. In conjunction with Mount Holyoke College, we sponsored live performances at the Rooke Theater followed by after-show talkbacks. Kim F. Hall (Lucyle Hook Professor of English and Professor of Africana Studies, Barnard College, Columbia University) delivered a historically wide-ranging
Photo- Colin Stanley
KEITH HAMILTON COBB
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HOW DOES THE RENAISSANCE SPEAK TO URGENT
keynote, “‘Othello Was My Grandfather’: Shakespeare and Race in the
QUESTIONS ABOUT RACE IN AMERICA TODAY?
African Diaspora.” Her talk explored connections between Shakespeare and
THE CENTER EXPLORED THIS QUESTION IN TANDEM
freedom dreams in the African Diaspora, outlining a tension between the ways
WITH KEITH HAMILTON COBB’S AWARD-WINNING
that “Shakespeare” and blackness have been valued in the 400 years since Shakespeare’s birth. It opened onto the ways that black writers and actors in the
Company and has performed numerous roles on, off-, and off-off-Broadway, including two years in the title role of the Tony Award-winning War Horse at Lincoln Center Theater. Together, the director of American Moor, Kim Weild, actor/playwright Keith Hamilton Cobb, scholar Kim Hall, and actor Jude Sandy engaged our UMass Amherst community in urgent and open conversations about Shakespeare, race, and America today. Cobb gifted the Center with a copy of the playscript, which we currently hold in our rare book collection. The Center is the second library in the world to hold a copy in its collections; the other is the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC.
THEATRICAL PRODUCTION, AMERICAN MOOR.
early twentieth century used Shakespeare when grappling with constructions of
This program drew audiences from all of the Five Colleges and the broader
BY WAY OF CREATIVE, PUBLIC-FACING, AND
blackness and race in the United States.
New England community. Interviews with Cobb appeared in the Daily Hampshire
SCHOLARLY PROGRAMMING, THE CENTER EXPLORED
Our conversations bridged research and the creative arts by way of an Actors
‘SHAKESPEARE, RACE, AND AMERICA . . .
Studio, facilitated by the Trinidad & Tobago-born actor, movement artist, teacher,
NOT NECESSARILY IN THAT ORDER.’
and director Jude Sandy. Sandy is currently in residency at the Trinity Repertory
Gazette and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Morgan Reppert, managing editor for Massachusetts Daily Collegian, reflected on the immersive and hands-on learning experiences that American Moor offered to undergraduate students.
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The American Moor programming at the Center was generously supported by:
Berlin Lecture
The Office of the Provost The College of Humanities and Fine Arts
“The Lure of the Moor: Othello in an Arab American Setting”
The Five College Consortium Lecture Fund The Department of English, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Professor Mazen Naous (Department
The Department of Theater, University of Massachusetts Amherst
of English, University of Massachusetts
The Department of English, Amherst College
Amherst) inaugurated discussion of
The Department of English, Mount Holyoke College Photo- John Crispin
Othello’s global afterlives in the annual Normand Berlin Lecture. Drawing upon his forthcoming book, Poetics of Visibility in the Contemporary Arab American Novel, Naous explored Diana Abu-Jaber’s novel Crescent.
“O for a Muse of Fire!” HENRY V, HAMPSHIRE SHAKESPEARE This past summer the Center welcomed Hampshire Shakespeare Company’s production of Henry V. Noah Tuleja (Director of Theater Arts, Mount Holyoke College, and Artistic Director of The Players Project at the Center) created a thrilling production that was both visually striking in its minimalist design and innovative in its approach. With only five actors, Tuleja captured the complexity of Henry’s character, the intrigue of court politics, and nuances of the soldier-King’s English language, thereby painting a robust picture of the Anglo-French wars at the center of the play. An interview with Tuleja regarding his creative choices can be found on the Center’s new podcast: Foraging Shakespeare.
Photo- Colin Stanley
PLAYERS PROJECT Under the founding direction of Noah Tuleja, the Center is growing
American Moor is a 90-minute solo play written and performed by Keith Hamilton Cobb
its programming with The Players Project. The Players Project is a
and directed by Kim Weild. Following its performance in the Valley, the play enjoyed a run at Off-Broadway’s Cherry Lane Theatre. The work examines the experiences and perspectives of black men in America through the metaphor of William Shakespeare’s character, Othello. It is not an adaptation of Othello but an echoing of it in our lives today. American Moor is a play about race in America, but it is also a performance about who is allowed to make art, who is cast in Shakespeare’s plays, actors and acting, and the nature of unadulterated love.
Rare Book and Curatorial Exhibit
company of Five College actors meeting across
Noah Tujela
different campuses to workshop modern plays that use the lens of the Renaissance to view
The World of Othello
contemporary culture.
FORAGING SHAKESPEARE:
The Moor “of here and everywhere”?
A New Podcast
Discovering Othello in maps, visual arts,
This podcast features interviews with theater directors,
and early theatrical criticism.
writers, scholars, students, and invited artisans to discover the sometimes surprising ways in which our creations today find their roots in the Renaissance.
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THE REFINERY
Collins Lecture “Shakespeare’s Reformations: Thinking with Conversion”
A NEW RESEARCH INITIATIVE AT THE CENTER
“Shakespeare is at his most creative and influential when thinking with conversion rather than The Refinery offers a forum for advanced graduate
For the inaugural Refinery, the Center welcomed
The conversation illuminated the central importance
students to share work in progress with an invited
Liz Fox, PhD (University of Massachusetts Amherst)
of feminist criticism in the project of uncovering
scholar whose research is currently shaping their
and Assistant Professor of Literature Stephen
early modern notions of cosmopolitanism. Fox
thinking. Authors precirculate their works in progress
Spiess (Babson College, Boston). Their theme:
is currently revising her dissertation into a book
to our research community. The authors begin their
Un/Chaste: Whore Plays & Cosmopolitan Desires.
project entitled, Sophisticating Comedy: Global
conversation by raising questions for each other,
Trafficking with comedy’s un/chaste women across
Exchange on the Jacobean Stage, and Spiess is
discussing intersections between their work, and
the cosmopolitan fictions of the Renaissance, the
completing his first book, Shakespeare and the
then open into a roundtable discussion with faculty
authors asked participants to grapple with the
Making of English Whoredom (under contract with
and graduate students from around the East Coast.
conceptual instabilities of the early modern whore.
Oxford University Press).
thinking about it,” argued Professor Paul Yachnin (Tomlinson Professor of Shakespeare Studies, McGill University) in the 36th annual Dan S. Collins Lecture. The English Department’s Collins Lecture is delivered by a leading scholar in the field of early modern literature. The lecture is named for the co-founder of English Literary Renaissance, a journal devoted to current criticism and scholarship of Tudor and early Stuart English literature.
Five College Book History Seminar “Servant-Functions and Author-Functions in Early Modern Europe” Ann Blair (Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor, Harvard University) specializes in the cultural and intellectual history of early modern Europe with an emphasis on France. Her talk shared the contours of her recent research project on early modern amanuenses.
ShaxMoot
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Five College Renaissance Seminar
moot, n. 1 A meeting, an assembly of people, esp. one for judicial or legislative purposes.
“‘A Strange, Hollow, and Confused Noise’: Prospero’s Start and the Phenomenology of Magic”
Just as we think of the Civil Code or the judgments of the
Graduate students and faculty debated the case of Violette
Lyn Tribble (Professor, University of Connecticut) explored how magic practitioners were trained to
Supreme Court as law, our project was to think of Shakespeare
and Normand LeBlanc versus The Miranda Hospital of Hope.
alter their states of consciousness in order to perform the emotional labor of conjuring spirits.
as law—a ShaxMoot! Professor Paul Yachnin (Tomlinson
The hearing considered the right to medical aid in dying for an
Professor of Shakespeare Studies, McGill University) offered
advanced Alzheimer’s patient, Violette LeBlanc. The document
the Center’s research community an exciting new method of
by which this case was argued was a single Shakespeare play,
Community Shakespeare
engaging with Shakespeare. By a process of dramatic invention
All’s Well That Ends Well. Using the play as law, the community
This season our popular Community Shakespeare courses were offered by Professor Marie Roche,
and indirection, this interactive workshop modeled and explored
debated what determined consent. This single case offered a
Professor Emeritus James van Luik, and Independent Scholar and Friend of the Center, Tony Burton.
the nature of interpretation, the development of a legal
taste of the more extensive Shakespeare Moot Court Project,
Seminars ranged in topic from Shakespeare in Translation to Science in the Renaissance.
tradition, and the way in which value and meaning intersect in
a collaborative effort between the Department of English and
the creation of law and literature alike.
Faculty of Law at McGill University.
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nt er e Ce h T
con g r at u l
ate s
RSA PHILADELPHIA 2019 FOUNDING EDITOR
The annual meeting of the Renaissance Society of America will be held in Philadelphia this year,
Arthur F. Kinney
and the Center is proud to announce our sponsorship of roundtable and panel discussions
INCOMING EDITORS Joseph Black, Mary Thomas Crane,
on
50 y ea r s
of field- defi
la r s o h c s n i ng
h ip
Jane Hwang Degenhardt, Adam Zucker
RARE BOOK AND CURATORIAL EXHIBITS
organized by our faculty and graduate students.
ROUNDTABLES ELR 50
OLD BABEL & NEW PHILOLOGIES
Adam Zucker
How did early moderns navigate
EDITORIAL BOARD Reid Barbour, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Mary Ellen Lamb, Southern Illinois
Elaine V. Beilin, Framingham State University
Lucy Munro, King’s College London
Ilona Bell, Williams College
William Oram, Smith College
Peter Berek, Amherst College
Ayesha Ramachandran, Yale University
William Carroll, Boston University
Marjorie Rubright, Massachusetts
Elizabeth H. Hageman, New Hampshire
Sharon Cadman Seelig, Smith College
Eugene David Hill, Mount Holyoke
Ian Smith, Lafayette College
Ann Rosalind Jones, Smith College
Alan Stewart, Columbia University
Greg Kneidel, Connecticut
Evelyn Tribble, Connecticut
ELR’s 50th Anniversary issue, “The State of Renaissance Studies II,” was published in January 2020. It features new essays by over 20 former ELR authors discussing the past, present, and future of Renaissance studies. The Center is home to both English Literary Renaissance and The Sidney Journal.
their polyglot world? An exhibition of
In celebration of English Literary Renaissance’s
dictionaries, grammars, and word books.
50th year of publication under the editorship of Arthur F. Kinney, this roundtable draws
TINY BOOKS How do you carry the world of knowledge in the palm of your hand? How the Renaissance predicted our digital age.
HENRY V BEYOND SHAKESPEARE Where did early moderns learn their medieval history? An exhibition of the literary histories of Henry the Fifth.
together many of the most prominent voices in the field as we reflect on where we’ve been and where we’re going in the future of Renaissance studies. The roundtable celebrates the field-defining editorial tenure of Arthur F. Kinney, founding director of the Center. Dina Alqassar, PhD Candidate
SESSIONS
University of Massachusetts Amherst, working with the Folger’s collections
Futures of the Maritime Humanities Hayley Cotter
OVIDIAN TRANSVERSIONS
The Sophisticated Stage:
How did translators shape the tales of
A Study in Object-Human Relations
Ovid? A transhistorical exhibition of Ovid’s
Liz Fox
Metamorphoses.
Intersections of Race Formations
FOLGER CONSORTIUM The Center is a consortium member of the Folger Institute (Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC), a collaborative endeavor involving over 40 leading colleges and universities.
Yunah Kae 10
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STUDENTS TEND TO THE CENTER’S HISTORICAL RENAISSANCE KITCHEN GARDEN
ENTANGLEMENTS
ECO-
UNEARTHING THE RENAISSANCE:
What can we learn by turning to the past to consider today’s environmental crises? Our 17th annual Graduate Student Conference, “Eco-Entanglements: Ruin, Grafting, Stratification,” drew together Anglo-Saxonists and early modernists to consider the ecological affordances of thinking with the medieval and early modern pasts. Our keynote speakers: Jean Feerick (Associate Professor, John Carroll University) and Heide Estes (Professor, Monmouth University).
Photo-Don David
Co-organized by Melissa Hudasko and John Yargo.
Renaissance Wednesday Lecture Ellen Kosmer, Professor Emerita of Art History, Worcester State University, delivered a lecture: 12
“Grottoes, Mazes, and Labyrinths in the Renaissance Garden.”
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2018—2019 DONORS CENTER PERSONNEL Marjorie Rubright, PhD
The Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies is grateful to our donors whose generous contributions build our rare book collections, support our seasonal artistic programs, and foster a vibrant research community.
Director
Amherst Garden Club
Arthur F. Kinney
Joseph Black, PhD
The Amherst Woman’s Club
Ellen Kosmer
Associate Director
Ronald Anderson
John Lancaster
Barbara Blumenthal
Gilbert Lawall
Edla Brabham
Nathaniel Leonard
David W. Briggs
Hal and Rebecca Lockwood
David Alan Brown
Brenda Lyons
Jeffrey Goodhind, MLIS Librarian
Liz Fox, PhD Interim Arts and Academic
Carolyn Collette
Programs Coordinator
Walter Denny and Alice Robbins
Emily Bernhard Assistant to the Director
Madeleine Pereira
Photo- Don David
Student Gardener Ellen Carroll-McLane The Alta Luna Consort
MUSIC TRANSPORTS US TO THE PAST.
Our Sunday and Holiday Concerts feature music from
Office Manager
Kirby Farrell Joanne Elizabeth Gates and Greg Halligan Dorothy Gavin
local attorney, and his wife, Janet Wilder Dakin, the youngest sister of the playwright Thornton Wilder. Janet Wilder Dakin was also a philanthropist
Gerald McFarland
and founder of the Dakin Animal Shelter.
John Nove
The research institute and classrooms are housed in
Melissa Perot
their brick home built in the style of a Renaissance
Brandon Shaw
cottage in Shakespeare’s Warwickshire.
Kenneth Gouwens
Diana Stein
Margaret K. De Gregorio
Raymond Waddington
Catherine Grygorcewicz
John Waldman
Anne Herrington
Dee Waterman
Bonnie Isman
Wilhemina Van Ness
David and Melba Jensen
T.C. Price Zimmermann
Lois Kackley
THANK YOU FOR YOUR GENEROSITY! Contributions may be made by mail using the form attached
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28-acre estate of Winthrop Saltonstall Dakin, a
Dorothy McCaffrey
AyreCraft, the Pioneer Valley Renaissance Wind Band, Alta Luna Consort, and The Harper and The Minstrel.
The Center occupies the grounds of the former
or online at: umass.edu/renaissance/give-renaissance
Arthur F. Kinney
Joseph Black, PhD
The Amherst Woman’s Club
Ellen Kosmer
Associate Director
Ronald Anderson
John Lancaster
Barbara Blumenthal
Gilbert Lawall
Edla Brabham
Nathaniel Leonard
David W. Briggs
Hal and Rebecca Lockwood
David Alan Brown
Brenda Lyons
Jeffrey Goodhind, MLIS Librarian
Liz Fox, PhD Interim Arts and Academic
Carolyn Collette
Programs Coordinator
Walter Denny and Alice Robbins
Don David PhotoDon David
David and Melba Jensen
T.C. Price Zimmermann
Lois Kackley
Alta Luna Consort, and The Harper and The Minstrel.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR GENEROSITY! Contributions may be made by mail using the form attached
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or online at: umass.edu/renaissance/give-renaissance
ZIP ________
AyreCraft, the Pioneer Valley Renaissance Wind Band,
Please accept my gift to support the artistic and scholarly programming
Wilhemina Van Ness
at the Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies
Bonnie Isman
o $75
Dee Waterman
o $500
Anne Herrington
o $50
John Waldman
o $250
Catherine Grygorcewicz
o Other amount__________
Raymond Waddington
o $150
Margaret K. De Gregorio
o $100
Our Sunday and Holiday Concerts feature music from
Diana Stein
Name _____________________________________________________
MUSIC TRANSPORTS US TO THE PAST.
Office Manager
Kenneth Gouwens
Address ___________________________________________________
Ellen Carroll-McLane The Alta Luna Consort
Brandon Shaw
City _______________________ State ____
Student Gardener
Dorothy Gavin
Melissa Perot
Email Address _____________________________________________
Madeleine Pereira
John Nove
o I wish to join the Center’s mailing and email lists to receive
Assistant to the Director
Joanne Elizabeth Gates and Greg Halligan
Gerald McFarland announcements of upcoming programming.
Emily Bernhard
Kirby Farrell
Dorothy McCaffrey
The Kinney Center is grateful for the generosity of our
Amherst Garden Club
PO Box 2300
Director
scholarly programming.
our seasonal artistic programs, and foster a vibrant research community.
donors and Friends who make possible our arts and
donors whose generous contributions build our rare book collections, support Amherst, MA 01004
Marjorie Rubright, PhD
The Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies is grateful to our
Please consider making a tax-deductible gift today.
CENTER PERSONNEL
Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies
2018—2019 DONORS