FUNDRAISING & DEVELOPMENT

Dear Friend of the CRRS,

Welcome to another year of activities sponsored by the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies!

Since you last heard from us, Olga Pugliese has completed her term as Director of the Centre. We thank her for her many contributions to the CRRS and wish her well in the next stages of her distinguished academic career. We welcome the incoming Director, Professor Lynne Magnusson, who is completing a 2-year Killam research fellowship and will take up her position in July 2010.

For the academic year 2009-2010, I will have the honour of serving as Director. Our first formal event this year will be the Erasmus Lecture, on Thursday, October 15. Professor George Bernard of the University of Southampton, a distinguished authority on the reign of Henry VIII, will speak on "The King's Painter: Holbein the Erasmian". The CRRS conference, To Have and to Hold: Marriage in Premodern Europe 1200-1700 will follow on October 16 and 17. Our Distinguished Visiting Scholar this spring will be Professor Patricia Demers of the University of Alberta. The CRRS series of Friday Workshops has begun, and this spring we will host the fourth annual concert in honour of William R. Bowen.

In connection with the appointment of a new Director, the Centre underwent an external review by two distinguished scholars. We are proud that the reviewers admired the Centre's "intellectual community" and praised the wide-ranging activities of the Centre, the library, the lectures and workshops, the publications program, and the undergraduate program. They concluded that the CRRS "stands out for the high quality and diversity of its activities among North America institutions of comparable size." As a supporter of the CRRS, you have contributed to the Centre's achievement of this level of excellence, and my colleagues and I are very grateful to you. We hope we may count on your continuing support in the form of donations (including books, of course) and participation in CRRS activities.

On the document below or on this link, you will find a list of the various possibilities for tax-deductible (and in some cases matched) donations. If you wish, you may specify the activity you wish to support: library collection development, research and travel grants for graduate and undergraduate students and visiting faculty, the Bowen concert, for example. As always, we will issue tax receipts for all donations. Many thanks for your support, past, present and future.

I look forward to seeing you at CRRS events.

With best wishes,

Jane Couchman Interim Director