Books and Early Modern Culture: Georgetown at the Folger Shakespeare Library - Georgetown College

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Books and Early Modern Culture: Georgetown at the Folger Shakespeare Library

June 1, 2011

Many Hoyas don't hit the library until final exams, but this semester select students travelled across town to study at the Folger Shakespeare Library—home to the world’s largest collection of materials related to Shakespeare and to a renowned collection of Renaissance texts—thanks to the Folger-Georgetown Undergraduate Research Seminar.

Students in the seminar, “Books and Early Modern Culture,” have access to the library’s holdings that are usually restricted to college professors, doctoral researchers, and international scholars. Under the guidance of Dr. Sarah Werner, students adopt books in the collection and study their history over hundreds of years. Over the course of the semester, the students learn how the books were made, how they were used, and how their production shaped our understanding of the texts themselves.

“It’s almost a kind of anthropological approach to the period that is generally recognized as the greatest literary period in English history,” said Professor Lena Orlin, who is a former Executive Director of the Folger Institute and a professor of English at Georgetown.

The course provides a unique opportunity for students across disciplines to learn archival research skills. The class is open to students from any major, since the Folger collection houses more than Shakespearean manuscripts and features historical documents in subjects as diverse as American history, music, and the history of science. Werner explained that she tries to let students play to their strengths and interests. “I tried to develop assignments that invited them in to do their own work to it, to put their own twist on it, while still providing a methodological framework that I could help guide them through,” she noted. The result is that students teach each other about the Folger collections, and work as a group to learn how its books were read, produced, and preserved for centuries.

Books and Early Modern Culture: Georgetown at the Folger Shakespeare Library follows three students—English major Jenny Rogers (C’11), American Studies major Nadia Mahmassani (C’12), and English major Tom Kelley (C’11)—as they explore the Folger collection and explain how the class had been unique to their Georgetown experience. It also features Professor of English Lena Orlin, and Dr. Sarah Werner, the Undergraduate Program Director at the Folger Shakespeare Library. The film was created by Lead College Videographer Kuna Malik Hamad.

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