The Group
for Early Modern Studies
Research Resources & Affiliations
Local Resources for Early Modern Studies:
- University of Arizona Libraries
provide extensive resources in support of the humanities, sciences, social
sciences, with over 5 million titles and 75,000 new ones added each year;
subscriptions to 36,000 journals, most of them electronic as well as paper;
access to all databases essential to early modern studies, including Archives
USA, Art Abstracts, ARTbibliographies Modern, Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography, EEBO (Early English Books Online), Gerritsen Collection of Women's
History Online, 1543-1945, Early Encounters in North America, Peoples, Cultures,
and the Environment, Library of Latin Texts, Literature Resource Center, and
Renaissance Women Online; a significant collection of microfilms and microfiches,
including Medieval and Early Modern Women (manuscript holding of the British
library), Sex and Sexuality 1640-1940, El Archivo de Hidalgo del Parral, 1631-1821,
the H. P. Kraus Collection of Documents Relating to Spanish America, 1500-1819,
and Die Getreidehandelspolitik der Europaischen Staaten vom 13. bis zum 18.
Jahrhunderts; and major collections in East Asian Studies and the Middle East.
- University
of Arizona Library Special Collections, recipient of the Association of
College and Research Libraries 2001 Excellence in Academic Libraries Award,
has an extensive collection of documents and manuscripts of the Southwest
dating from the late 17th century, including those of Native Americans, Spanish
missionaries and other explorers, and Anglo settlers; the Bloom Southwest
Jewish Archives, documenting early synagogues, Jewish life, and possible traces
of crypto-Jewish life in the Southwest; a history of science book collection
with works from the 15th through the 18th centuries, including first editions
of books by Copernicus, Galileo, and Huygen; a first edition of La Dictionnaire
de l'Académie Française; a growing collection of facsimiles
of important medieval and early modern manuscripts and printed works; and
the T. E. Hanley Fine Arts and Theatre Arts collection of over 38,000 volumes,
featuring extensive holdings in English Restoration and 18th-century drama.
- University
of Arizona Fine Arts Library, housing resources for research in music,
art, and architecture, has substantial resources for the study of early music
that features a rich collection of early music from the Americas supported
by subscriptions to databases such as the Naxos Music Library, which provides
access to over 130,000 tracks plus liner notes for the entire Naxos and Marco
Polo collections, Grove Music Online, the International Index to Music Periodicals
(full text), and all other standard bibliographic resources.
- University of Arizona Law
Library has over 450,000 volumes, including a foreign and international
collection with an emphasis on Mexican and Latin American law and extensive
collections on Native American and indigenous law.
- Arizona State Museum,
an anthropology and research museum documenting the cultural history of indigenous
peoples in the greater Southwest, holds over 150,000 catalogued archeological
and ethnographical artifacts of the Southwest and 50,000 books on the anthropology
of the Southwest; the largest vessel collection of Southwest Indian pottery
in the world; and an extensive textile collection, including one of the largest
collection of Navajo textiles.
- University of Arizona Museum of
Art has one of the largest collections of Renaissance and Baroque art
in the Southwest, including the Retablo Room, with 26 panels of the 15th-century
retablo from the cathedral of Ciudad Rodrigo by the Spanish master Fernando
Gallego, as well as works by Vittore Carpaccio, Domenico Tintoretto, Pontormo
(Jacopo Carucci), Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, Lucas van Leyden, Albrecht
Dürer, Hendrik Goltzius, Rembrandt van Rijn, Pieter Breugel, Canaletto,
and Francisco Goya as well as a significant collection of modern masters and
Western American art.
- Division for Late Medieval and
Reformation Studies, directed by Professor Susan Karant-Nunn, hosts a
prestigious annual Town and Gown Lecture and holds the Heiko O. Oberman library
of 10,000 works, one of the largest private collections of early modern and
modern books on the Reformation, including early printed works from the sixteenth
century.
- University of Arizona Medieval,
Renaissance, and Reformation Committee (UAMARRC), an organization for
faculty and students with interests in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, sponsors
an annual Work in Progress Symposium for University faculty and graduate students;
subsidizes invited speakers and visiting scholars; offers an annual research
grant for graduate students; is the constituent body of ACMRS (see below);
underwrites UA membership in the Institute for Historical Research, London;and
is a member of the Medieval Academy of America's Committees on Centers and
Regional Associations.
- University of Arizona Center for
Middle Eastern Studies (CMES) has formal links to universities and programs
throughout the Middle East, organizes scholarly conferences and workshops
as well as a lecture series, and supports undergraduate and graduate study
of the Middle East, including study abroad programs.
- Arizona Center for Judaic
Studies promotes advanced study in the various fields of Judaica and supports
the Shaol Pozez Memorial Lecture Series on Jewish history, traditions, and
culture and the Rabbi Albert T. Bilgray Memorial Lectureship.
- Women's Studies Department and Southwest
Institute for Research on Women (SIROW), with 14 core faculty members,
6 adjunct faculty, a dozen research specialists and program coordinators,
and some 60 affiliated faculty from departments across campus, provides students
and faculty with resources for the study of the history of women, gender,
sexuality, race, and class with a particular focus on the Southwest and Latina
history and culture; offers and cross-lists graduate courses in feminist theories,
queer theories, Latina feminisms, feminist political theory, women and the
body, feminist methodologies, cultural theory, queer (lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgendered) history, women and literature, women's history, women and religion,
gender and the law, and gender, race, and ethnicity; and provides research
and travel support for students and faculty pursuing research on women, gender,
and sexuality.
- Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual,
Transgender Studies supports the study of the histories, politics, and
cultures of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people and diverse scholarship
on sexuality, especially the interconnections between sexuality, gender, race,
and economic processes and the complex material and symbolic, local, and global
forces that shape practices of sexual identity and community; offers interdisciplinary
reading groups and public programs such as an Annual Sex and Scholarship Symposium;
and supports curriculum development around issues of concern to LGBT studies.
- University of Arizona Collegium
Musicum, an early music ensemble of 40 singers and instrumentalists, specializes
in music written before 1750, with attention to historically-informed performance
practice on period instruments.
- Arizona Early Music Society (AEMS)
organizes concerts featuring music from the Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque
periods performed by early music specialists on period instruments; AEMS hosts
an annual series that brings internationally-famous musicians and ensembles
to Tucson as well as Hausmusik, concerts by local early music specialists
in a more informal setting.
- Musica Sonora, directed by Christina
Jarvis, is a Tucson ensemble specializing in early music, with vocal and instrumental
repertoire spanning the 13th to the 17th centuries.
- Arizona Historical Society
is charged with collecting, preserving, interpreting, and disseminating the
history of Arizona and the West; the Tucson Main Museum Library, adjacent
to the University of Arizona campus, houses a collection of over 500,000 artifacts
and other materials related to Arizona history.
- San Xavier del Bac
Mission, a National Historic Landmark built in the late 18th century by
Franciscan missionaries and the Tohono O'odham people (who continue to worship
in the church) on the site of a mission established by the Jesuit Father Eusebio
Francisco Kino in 1692, provides unique opportunities for study through its
ongoing restoration and a small museum that documents the history of indigenous
peoples on the site as well as missionary life and the building of the church
and surrounding structures.
- Arizona Center for Medieval and
Renaissance Studies (ACMRS), a state-wide research unit housed at Arizona
State University in Tempe, coordinates and stimulates interdisciplinary exploration
of Medieval and Renaissance culture; ACMRS organizes lectures and programs
at the three major Arizona universities; hosts an annual conference in Medieval
and Renaissance Studies; and offers a Summer Study Abroad Program in conjunction
with St Catharine's College, Cambridge.
Regional Libraries and Archives:
Huntington Library Art Collections, and
Botanical Gardens, San Marino, California, is a research institution for
the scholarly study of British and American history, literature, art history,
and the history of science, with notable collections in
- American art, British 18th-century paintings, British drawings, silver,
sculpture, and miniatures, French 18th-century furniture, sculpture, and decorative
arts, and an extensive art reference collection;
- American history, including a nearly complete collection of very rare 16th-century
accounts of exploration from Columbus onward, 7,500 imprints from 1640-1800,
including newspapers, pamphlets and almanacs, and an extensive collection
of printed books and pamphlets about the American Revolution;
- British history, featuring resources unequaled in the United States for
medieval and early modern history, including the Battle Abbey Papers, the
Hastings Papers, the Ellesmere Collection (with estate and local records for
the entire 16th century and monastic accounts up to the Dissolution), and
the Brydges Papers (with the papers of James, 1st Duke of Chandos), as well
as 5,400 British and Continental incunabula, manuscript and printed material
on the Civil War, Cromwell, non-conformists, Puritanism, and British colonialism,
especially Ireland, and over 40,000 books printed in England between 1475
and 1700;
- literature, including the Ellesmere Chaucer, the Towneley Plays, and the
Chester cycle, half the titles printed in England before 1641, including manuscripts
of Swift, Pope, and Johnson, 95% of English plays and masques in one or more
early edition;
- Continental books, especially 16th-century;
- the history of science, including strong holdings of scientific books published
in the 15th century, with a focus on the history of medicine, and many scientific,
medical, and technical books of the 16th and 17th centuries, including the
works of Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon, Martin Lister, and many
others.
The Huntington hosts many lectures and conferences on early modern topics and
is the site for the annual Renaissance Conference of Southern California.
William Andrews Clark
Memorial Library, Los Angeles, with holdings in
- British literature and history from the Civil War through the reign of
George II, with works by Newton, Boyle, Halley, Evelyn, and Digby forming
the core of the largest history of science collection in the western United
States;
- literature, featuring virtually all first editions of Restoration drama,
a Dryden collection rivaled only by that of the British Library, and collections
centering on Milton, Defoe, Swift, Pope, Fielding, and Behn;
- an extensive collection of music books and songs, scores, and musicology
printed before 1750, ballad and comic operas, the edited works of Purcell,
Handel, and their contemporaries in England, and manuscript anthems, hymns,
and incidental music;
- Protestant theology, including the library of Thomas Cartwright and more
than 8,500 religious pamphlets from the period.
GEMS is a consortium member of:
Newberry Library Center for Renaissance
Studies Consortium, Chicago, has magnificent collections embracing the history
and literature of Western Europe and the Americas, with major strengths in
- European discovery, exploration, and settlement of the Americas, with extensive
manuscript, pamphlet, and book holdings on the English, Spanish, Portuguese,
and French colonies;
- American Indian history and literature, with over 130,000 volumes, a million
manuscript pages, 500 atlases, 2,000 maps, and 3,500 drawings and paintings
on indigenous history;
- Early American history, from the colonial period to the early republic,
documented by colonial records, published state archives, historical society
papers, county and town histories, newspapers and periodicals, missionary
accounts, travel literature, diaries, sermons, hymns, and historical monographs,
featuring pamphlets from the French and Indian War and material on the Hudson
Bay Company;
- British history, with especially strong collections of recusant books, pamphlets,
and manuscripts from 1559 through the 19th century, local histories and records,
the history of education, and travel literature;
- French history, especially the French Revolution, including political treatises
from the Middle Ages through the 19th century, with particularly strong holdings
in the 16th and 17th centuries, emblem books, courtesy books, and works on
religious non-conformity;
- Italian history, especially the Renaissance, with 40 pre-1500 and over 350
post-1500 manuscripts, featuring emblem books, family histories, family papers,
travel narratives, religious texts, including Hebraica, and political commentary
as well as hundreds of incunabula that document the history of Italian printing,
including extensive holdings on the work of Bodoni, and extensive collections
on Italian Renaissance rhetoric and poetics;
- the history of cartography, with over 800 maps printed in Italy during the
16th century and the materials of the Ayer collection, which includes 2,000
maps, 500 atlases, and 300 manuscript maps that document the development of
geography and cartography of the Western Hemisphere;
- the history and theory of music, with many hundreds of opera libretti, liturgical
works from the 16th through the 18th centuries, and numerous volumes of motets
and madrigals;
- dance and dance history, with first editions of many early works from France
and Italy;
- the history of printing and early philology and linguistics;
- British literature, with virtually all early printed books represented in
the collection and with a particular focus on Elizabethan and Restoration
drama, early English translations of classical and Continental works, 18th-century
periodicals, and poetry.
The Center for Renaissance Studies at the Newberry hosts many conferences and
seminars on early modern topics each year and supports visiting scholars.
Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington
DC, has a world-renowned collection that supports the study of Britain and Europe
in the early modern era, with particular strength in the 16th and 17th centuries
and the study of Shakespeare and the theater to the present day, including
- 250,000 English books, among them 116,000 rare books (many with interesting
and important marginalia), including one of the largest collection of Short
Title Catalogue books in the world;
- a Continental collection that includes over 400 incunabula, a Reformation
collection of 2,000 volumes, plus important collections on Italian drama,
travel literature, science and technology, military history, and French and
Dutch historical and political pamphlets from 1500-1700;
- 60,000 manuscripts from the 13th century to the present, including original
poetic, literary, and dramatic works, music (including works for the lute
by John Dowland), correspondence (including letters of John Donne), family
papers, diaries, commonplace books, miscellanies, sermons, account books,
receipt books, warrants, deeds, and forgeries; significant collections include
papers of the Bagot, Bacon-Townshend, Rich, and Cavendish-Talbot families
as well as the papers of Sir Thomas Cawarden, First Master of the English
Revels, and the papers of the Strozzi family, comprising 200 volumes of transcripts
from the Papal and Venetian Archives;
- 200 oil paintings and 50,000 drawings, prints, photographs, and other images,
including works by the Elizabethan artists George Gower and Nicholas Hilliard,
the engravings of Wenceslaus Hollar, and an important set of Jacobean watercolors;
- a wealth of material artifacts, including musical instruments, costumes,
and films, an extensive collection of early English porcelain, featuring plaques,
tiles, ewers, jugs, and portrait medallions celebrating figures of the 18th-
and 19th-century English stage, Tudor and Stuart furniture, 16th- and 17th-century
French and Flemish tapestries, coins, tokens, and games, and 250,000 playbills;
- a collection of materials related to Shakespeare (the largest in the world)
that includes 229 quarto editions of Shakespeare's plays and poems and 79
First Folios (1623), deeds for Shakespeare's purchase of New Place and the
Blackfriars Gatehouse, almost 1,000 prompt books for Shakespeare plays, and
manuscripts associated with all the leading dramatists and Shakespearean actors
through the 18th century;
- a noted collection of early instruments.
The Folger hosts many conferences and seminars on early modern topics and supports
visiting scholars and fellows.