Newberry Library Competition

Funds are available for KU graduate students and faculty to participate in the Newberry Library's Center for Renaissance Studies programs or to conduct research in pertinent collections at the Newberry. By a reciprocal arrangement, KU graduate students and faculty may participate in Folger Institute programs or conduct research at the Folger Library.

For the 2023-24 academic year, KU has paused our membership in the Newberry Consortium. (We hope to return to full membership in the 2024-25 academic year). During the 2023-24 academic year, the Newberry is allowing us to spend our banked funds. So this year, rather than award funds on a rolling basis, we are asking all parties interested in conducting research or attending an event at the Newberry to apply by Dec. 1, 2023. 

In order to apply, please submit a brief plan for the research you plan to conduct (or event you plan to attend) at the Newberry. If you are a graduate student, your advisor will need to submit a brief endorsement. This endorsement should indicate the graduate student’s status in the program, address how this research trip will advance the student’s research, and confirm that the Newberry’s holdings and/or event are essential for the student’s professional development.

Materials should be emailed to Patricia Manning (pwmannin@ku.edu) by Friday, Dec. 1 at 5 p.m.

The funding for KU's participation in the consortium is provided by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Hall Center for the Humanities. Members of the KU Newberry Library Consortium Committee are Patricia Manning (chair); Luis Corteguera; Misty Schieberle; Brent Metz (secretary).

The Newberry Library Center for Renaissance Studies serves scholars through the use of the Newberry's internationally renowned collections in the late medieval and Renaissance periods. Founded in 1979, the Center offers a wide range of programs at the graduate and postdoctoral levels, including intensive training in the techniques (i.e., paleography, bibliography, codicology, textual editing) essential for primary research in these fields; interdisciplinary seminars; workshops; and conferences. Located at the Newberry Library on the near north side of Chicago, the Center also provides a locus for a lively community of scholars who come from all over the world to use the Library's collections of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts and printed books, including two thousand incunables, holdings in the humanities, philology, and the earliest critical historiography, French political pamphlets (1560-1649), the history of learning, printing, and scholarship, and the course of European expansion into the Americas.

The Center is organized as a consortium of thirty-nine universities, which contribute to its administration and oversee the planning of programs through representatives on the Executive Committee. The aims of the Center are to integrate the resources of the Newberry into the educational process and to make available programs that are not feasible for institutions to mount alone.

In addition to lectures and conferences, the Center for Renaissance Studies offers consortium seminars during the academic year. These courses permit an instructor to direct an advanced seminar in his or her area of specialization by drawing from a larger pool of participants than may be available on a single campus, and they serve as a first-hand introduction to the Newberry's holdings of manuscripts and early editions in areas of its special strengths. Center for Renaissance Studies seminars are conducted as symposia for scholars with common interests and goals, rather than as formal courses, and each participant is encouraged to develop his or her own research interests within the limits, broadly interpreted, of the general topic designated by the seminar leader. Graduate students taking a course for credit should make arrangements with their own institutions. Faculty auditing is encouraged. Funds are available for KU faculty and graduate students to participate in all Center programs.

The Center for Renaissance Studies collaborates with the Folger Institute in Washington, D.C., itself a consortium of thirty-eight institutions. By a reciprocal arrangement, faculty members and graduate students from either consortium are eligible to participate in programs offered by the other.

For additional and ongoing information, visit the Newberry Library Center for Renaissance Studies website.

More information about The Folger Library Institute can be found at the Folger Library website. Please note the the Folger Library will be closed for expansion work from January 2020 for at least two years.