Welcome...
The Renaissance Colloquium is a place for graduate students working with Renaissance texts to discuss their work, hone their professional skills, and generate new ideas. We aim to create a collaborative space in which to recover Renaissance life in all its particularities and to bring that analysis into our study of literature.
This year's programming features talks on material culture, classical reception, Renaissance reading, genre, and performance, as we flesh out our understanding of the Renaissance world. If you are interested in joining our mailing list, presenting your work, or posing questions/suggestions, please get in touch. We look forward to exploring Renaissance literature with you!
Spring 2024 Schedule
The Renaissance Colloquium meets twice monthly on Wednesdays at 5 p.m in Barker Center 114 (Kresge Room).
January 25th
Welcome Event:
Medieval & Renaissance Library Crawl
In-person Event
Welcome back to the the Renaissance Colloquium! We are delighted to open the spring semester with a Library Crawl co-hosted with the Medieval Colloquium.
Refreshments will be served!
January 25th | 6pm EST
Location: Medieval Studies Library, Widener
February 7th
Guest Speaker:
Adhaar Noor Desai
In-person Event
Please join us in welcoming Adhaar Noor Desai, Assistant Professor of Literature at Bard College, for his talk entitled, "Rude Mechanicals: Shakespeare and Aesthetic Education in the Age of Generative AI."
February 7th | 5pm EST
Location: Barker 114
February 21st
Guest Speaker:
Whitney Trettien
In-person Event
Please join us in welcoming Whitney Trettien, Assistant Professor of English at University of Pennsylvania, for her talk entitled, "How Shakespeare’s First Folio Invented Digital Media." This talk is co-hosted with History of the Book at Harvard.
February 21st | 6pm EST
Location: Barker Center 114
March 27th
Guest Speaker:
Kristen Poole
In-person Event
Please join us in welcoming Kristen Poole, Professor of English at University of Delaware, for her talk entitled,"Living Insphered: Milton’s Cosmic Proprioception."
March 27th | 5.30pm EST
Location: Barker 114
April 10th
Graduate Student Talk:
Sam Bozoukov
In-person Event
Please join us for a Graduate Student talk entitled "The 'Hideous Noise' of Samson Agonistes: Milton's Crisis of Dissonance."
April 10th| 5.30pm EST
Location: Barker 114
April 24th
Guest Speaker:
Jane Hwang Degenhardt
In-person Event
Please join us in welcoming Jane Hwang Degenhardt, Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, for her talk entitled "Shakespeare's Speculative Horizons: The Impossible, the Unknowable, and the Dream of Other Worlds." This talk is co-hosted with the Theater and Performance Colloquium.
April 24th | 6pm EST
Location: Barker 114
Fall 2023 Schedule (archive)
The Renaissance Colloquium meets twice monthly on Wednesdays at 5 p.m in Barker Center 114 (Kresge Room).
September 4th
Medieval/Renaissance Labor Day Welcome BBQ
In-person Event
Welcome back to the the Renaissance Colloquium! We are delighted to open our 2023-24 academic year with a Welcome BBQ event co-hosted with the Medieval Colloquium.
Please contact vpipas@fas.harvard.edu or yoojung_chun@g.harvard.edu
for directions or to coordinate transportation.
September 4 | 12-5pm EST
Location: Concord, MA
September 19th
Special Guest Houghton Workshop: Greg Doran
In-person Event
Please join us in welcoming Greg Doran, the Royal Shakespeare Company's former artistic director, for a graduate workshop on the transmission history of Shakespeare's plays and the director's perspective on the role of the First Folio in Shakespearean performance. Attendance limited to Harvard Early Modern Graduate students and faculty.
September 19 | 1pm EST
Location: Hofer Room, Houghton Library
October 4th
Harvard Speaker:
Leah Whittington
In-person Event
Please join us for a talk by Leah Whittington, Professor of English at Harvard, for her talk entitled, "Spenser, Chaucer, and the Supplemented Book." Professor Whittington will speak to to a joint Medieval-Renaissance Colloquia audience.
October 4 | 5pm EST
Location: Barker Center 114
October 18th
Graduate Student Talk:
Caroline Engelmayer
In-person Event
Please join us for a Graduate Student talk entitled "'Forsake me not thus': Ovid's Heroides and Milton's Psychology of Alienation."
October 18 | 5pm EST
Location: Barker Center 114
November 1st
Guest Speaker:
Jessica Beckman
In-person Event
Please join us in welcoming Jessica Beckman, Assistant Professor of English at Dartmouth, for her talk entitled, "Reading the Room: Spenser and the Space of the Text."
November 1st| 5pm EST
Location: Barker Center 114
November 15th
Guest Speaker:
Catherine Nicholson
In-person Event
Please join us in welcoming Catherine Nicholson, Professor of English at Yale, for her talk entitled, "Reforming the Alphabet: The Renaissance Before Reading."
November 15th | 5pm EST
Location: Barker Center 114
November 30th
Harvard Speaker:
James Simpson
In-person Event
Please join us in welcoming James Simpson, the Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor Emeritus of English at Harvard, for his talk entitled, "Modernity's Selfhood and the Desacralization of Images; or, Being an Early Modern Image Hurts." Professor Simpson will speak to to a joint Medieval-Renaissance Colloquia audience.
Thursday, November 30 | 5pm EST
Location: Barker Center 024
December 6th
MFA Visit: "Strong Women in Renaissance Italy"
In-person Event
Please join us for a visit to and self-guided group tour of the MFA's Special Exhibition, "Strong Women in Renaissance Italy." More info. on the exhibition can be found here.
Please contact vpipas@fas.harvard.edu if you are interested in attending.
Wednesday, December 6 | 3pm EST
Location: Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave, Boston
If you have any questions or want to be added to our mailing list, please reach out.
Colloquium Coordinators for 2023-2024
Victoria Pipas (vpipas@fas.harvard.edu)
Yoojung Chun (yoojung_chun@g.harvard.edu)
Faculty Coordinators
Leah Whittington (lwhittington@fas.harvard.edu)
Alan Niles (niles@fas.harvard.edu)
Gordon Teskey (gteskey@fas.harvard.edu)
Stephen Greenblatt (greenbl@fas.harvard.edu)
Mailing Lists and Newsletters
To be added to the Renaissance Colloquium e-mail list, write to the 2022-2023 coordinator (vpipas@fas.harvard.edu).
To receive e-mails about events in the History of the Book Seminar Series at Harvard, write to histbook@fas.harvard.edu.
To receive e-mails about events in Early Modern Studies in the Boston area, write to earlymod@fas.harvard.edu.
To be added to the Humanities Center's weekly e-mail list, write to humcentr@fas.harvard.edu.