A Campuswide Special Exhibit
W. E. B. Du Bois Library &
Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies
September 2023 - May 2024
This year marks the 400th anniversary of the publication of the First Folio of William Shakespeare’s plays (1623) and the world-premiere of the Gillespie family's private collection of Shakespeare's works. This extraordinary collection contains extracts from the First Folio, copies of three other early folio editions of the plays (1632, 1663, 1685), Shakespeare’s Poems (1640), and a diverse array of materials that trace the history of Shakespeare’s plays—on page, stage, and film—from the Restoration through to the Twentieth Century.
At the W. E. B. Du Bois Library and Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies, the Shakespeare Unbound exhibit asks: what happens when Shakespeare appears in fragments or as momentary flashes in history? With selections from the Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center, the works of W. E. B. Du Bois, Phillis Wheatley, and others are joined in conversation with William Shakespeare to explore stories of Shakespeare unbound and rebound, scattered and gathered together into new assemblages across place and time. At the Kinney Center, exhibits explore a wide range of topics including: the story of the print revolution in Renaissance Europe and the emergence of the book in its modern form (Nobel Fragments, Fall 2023); Shakespeare and Mass Incarceration (Spring 2024): and Water-Worlds: Ripple Effects or Sea Change? (Spring - Summer, 2024).
Shakespeare Unbound is made possible through a private collection of rare books generously on loan to the University in honor of the collector’s life-long friendship with former UMass Amherst Professor Pieter Elgers.