We are delighted to be hosting one of the world's great Renaissance scholars
in the second week of March, when Professor Charles Fantazzi (Thomas Hariot
Distinguished Visiting Professor of Classics and Italian, East Carolina
University) will be with us. Professor Fantazzi has published translations
of Erasmus, Vives, Poliziano, Sannazaro, and is part of the team working
on the University of Toronto Press Collected Works of Erasmus of Rotterdam
project. He will present the following public lectures:
See our Events Calendar for more details. Click here for a list of our past Distinguished Visiting Scholars.
Professor Fantazzi began his career forty years ago as a teaching assistant at Harvard University. He came to the University of Windsor in 1960 to teach in the classical languages and literatures programs and continued to teach even after his official retirement in 1995. He was named as a University Professor in 1994 and Professor Emeritus in 1995 by the University of Windsor. Consultation appointments for students and scholars are available on Wednesday March 17 and Friday March 19 from 2:00-3:30 p.m. Please contact Kim Yates to schedule an appointment at crrs.vic@utoronto.ca or at (416) 585-4484.
The Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies offers Fellowships to a growing number of scholars who come to use our collections, to make contact with our community, and to establish an academic affiliation at the University of Toronto. (For more information on CRRS Fellowships, visit our Fellowships page.)
Most fellowships are awarded at the beginning of September, but this year we have been fortunate enough to attract several additional researchers who have joined us since then.
We welcome the following new fellows and their research projects:
Click here for a complete list of all current CRRS Fellows.
In June 1999, to honour the contributions of retiring Professor Germaine Warkentin, the CRRS began a fund for the assistance of graduate students who needed to travel for research or to give conference papers. For almost three years, it gathered money and generated interest, and in 2002-3 it began to award small bursaries. The demand, however, was overwhelming. Far more applications were received than could be funded, and given the drop in interest rates, the fund soon dropped into dangerously low levels. We have not been able to provide bursaries this year.
Travel is a necessity for many graduate students: whether to check early editions at other libraries, perform research in foreign archives for a few months, or simply to give a paper at a large conference, travel is a required component in the struggle for academic achievement. For most graduate students, already well below the poverty line, it is an impossible burden and the lack of travel can become a handicap in the fiercely competitive job market.
We are appealing to your sense of responsibility to our next generation of scholars. Please give generously to the Warkentin Fund so that we can provide this very-much-needed form of assistance to our graduate students. All donations received before 1 March 2004 will be treated as charitable donations made in the year 2003 for tax purposes. Cheques should be made payable to "Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies" with a memo indicating that they are for the Warkentin Fund. Credit card donations may be faxed to (416) 585-4430. Our mailing address is CRRS, 73 Queen's Park Cr. E., Toronto ON, M5S 1K7
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The Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies is one of the best places in the world to study early modern confraternities: we host the journal Confraternitas (visit its web site), collect current scholarship, and maintain an active offprint collection of articles on this subject.
Along with the Trinity College Faculty of Divinity, CRRS will jointly sponsor a lecture by Anne Dillon (of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge) titled, "'The unlearned mans booke': The Jesuits' Use of the Confraternity of the Rosary in England and Japan, 1549-1700". Dr. Dillon will speak on March 3 at 4:00 p.m. in the Burwash SCR.
See our Events Calendar for more details.
The
First Annual Spenserian Stanza competition is jointly hosted by The
Spenser Review, the Edmund
Spenser Home Page and the International Spenser Society. It is
open to all undergraduate students, and will be judged by Professor Harry
Berger (of the University of California Santa Cruz). Please announce this
contest to your friends and students.
Entries should follow the nine-line, rhyming form of the Spenserian stanza, should be written in English, and should be between one and fifteen stanzas in length. They may take any subject. Entries should be submitted directly to Andrew Zurcher by email at aez20@cam.ac.uk, or by post at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge CB2 1TA, United Kingdom, to arrive not later than Lady Day (25 March) 2004. The winner(s) will be announced by May Day 2004, and the winning submission(s) published in The Spenser Review and electronically on the Edmund Spenser Home Page. The winner(s) will also receive a Spenser book prize from the International Spenser Society.
Further information is available at www.english.cam.ac.uk/spenser/stanza.
We are pleased to announce two purchases made at the Sotheby's auction on 4-5 December 2003, of the books of H.P. Kraus. They are:
To search rare book holdings in the CRRS collection, use the University of Toronto Library Catalogue. In the Library drop-down menu, limit your search to "Victoria University CRRS".
Iter Fellowships are awarded to graduate students who can read European languages other than English, and who work in disciplines that support research in medieval and renaissance studies. All Iter Fellowships are awarded through the home departments of the students, and most are managed by the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies.
For a complete list of 2003-2004 Iter Fellows, visit our Graduate Fellowships page.
In the spring of 2000, Mrs. Stephanie Corbet, a mature student just finishing the Renaissance Studies program, decided to make a difference. The program had been good, but it needed a bridge, a way to help promising students to make the transition from undergraduate into graduate studies. Her generosity permitted the creation of a research assistantship for senior undergraduate students who planned to enter graduate studies and were interested in some aspect of the Renaissance.
Since that time, six Corbet Research Assistants have had the opportunity to work in the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies. They learn to do everything from packing envelopes to developing web pages, from collating rare books to planning conferences. Most importantly, they have a unique opportunity to get to know graduate students, faculty members, and visiting scholars in an informal way that allows them to gain an insider's view of their field.
Every one of our Corbet Research Assistants has gone on to do graduate work, and collectively they have reached a wide range of disciplines. Here they are:
Our Corbet Research Assistants always bring energy, a sense of fun, and great enthusiasm to their work at the Centre. We are grateful to have the opportunity to work with them.
Applications for the program are accepted each September. For more information, visit our Corbet information page, or contact Kim Yates at crrs.vic@utoronto.ca or (416) 585-4484.
To order any CRRS publication, download our PDF order form.
For more information on our book series, click here.
Work on the Early English Rare Book Project is pressing forward. Once complete, this electronic database will offer a detailed listing of all early rare books and fragments from the CRRS collection printed in or for the British market between 1475-1640. From the single leaf of the 1482 Polychronicon printed by William Caxton to the 1640/1641 Works of Ben Jonson, the ca. 160 entries will be searchable through a link on the CRRS homepage. All entries (110 have now been completed) are produced through detailed book-in-hand description. Each one includes notes on Author/Compiler/Editor, Title, Date, Printer/ Publisher/Bookseller, format, typefaces and illustrations, printed marginalia, etc. Copy-specific notes give descriptions of binding and provenance, including records on ownership, price, and handwritten notes when present. Entries are numbered as in the English STC (2nd ed. print), and details of format, collation of pages and signatures are compared with the electronic ESTC and Early English Books Online (EEBO). The catalogue will be an important resource for scholars of the English Renaissance, particularly those interested in book history and its related disciplines of print culture, the history of collecting, and the history of reading.
Editor's Note: Scott Schofield will be presenting a Friday Workshop on 6 February 2004 on this project, titled "Cataloguing the English Renaissance Book: Problems and Possibilities." See our Events Calendar for more details.
Renaissance Studies is one of several prestigious academic programs administered by Victoria College. I have been enrolled there for the past two years, and by this point I have learned how to respond to the question: "And what exactly are you going to do with that?" Fortunately, the program's interdisciplinary nature provides ready answers. It enriches interests in literature, history, languages, fine arts, and even the sciences. As a result of the focus on forging links across disciplinary boundaries, our capacity for analytical reasoning and critical thought is honed, as we are forced to make connections that may not be obvious. These skills are indispensable not only to scholars, but also to museum curators, lawyers, and politicians (to name just a few of the possibilities).
The genesis of the program was more of an evolution than a big bang. At the heart of the program are the core VIC Renaissance Studies courses, which provide a rich context for the various optional courses. It all began in the mid-1970s as VIC240Y, a course in Renaissance Culture which is still the backbone of the Renaissance Studies program. It was originally the vision of English professor Ruth Harvey and the late French professor H.R. Secor, who both developed and taught the course for a number of years before passing the baton to Professors Konrad Eisenbichler and Kenneth Bartlett. Recognizing the popularity of VIC240Y, in the early 1980s Profs. Eisenbichler and Bartlett developed VIC440Y, a fourth-year seminar that builds on the foundations laid in VIC240Y. From this point forward the program began to take on a more defined shape as various half courses were offered, and by the mid-1980s Major and Minor programs were introduced.
The program has become increasingly interdisciplinary over the years, as evidenced most recently by Professor Eisenbichler's creation of a third-year course in Sex and Gender in the Renaissance (VIC343Y) in the late 1990s. This effectively opened up research in a new direction. The course regularly attracts students from disciplines outside of the humanities, such as biology, medicine, gender studies, and anthropology. Enrollment in the core VIC Renaissance Studies courses is currently at an all-time high, and the program continues to evolve and expand today.
One of the most significant highlights in 2003 2004 for Renaissance Studies students is Convivium, a four-part workshop series designed by graduate students at the CRRS for Renaissance Studies students. Its aim is to provide an opportunity for students in the program to get to know each other, as well as to supply them with useful information about pursuing Renaissance Studies at the graduate level. Another important event is the Early Modern Senior Undergraduate Seminar entitled "The Bible in the Renaissance and Reformation", a one-day intensive workshop which brings together students from various universities in southern Ontario.
The potential of Renaissance Studies may not be immediately clear when I meet people, but from inside the program, the possibilities are infinite.
Professor Alexander Nagel has been awarded a Canada Research Chair, one of the 98 held at the University of Toronto. Professor's Nagel's book, Michelangelo and the Reform of Art (Cambridge University Press), won the 2002 Phyllis Goodhart Gordan Prize for the Best Book in Renaissance Studies, awarded by the Renaissance Society of America. Professor Nagel has been named Andrew W. Mellon Professor at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA) in Washington, DC. One of the two most senior scholars at the Center, the Mellon Professor is appointed for a two-year term and is free to pursue independent research. Professor Nagel will begin his appointment in September 2004, and will retain his position and his graduate advising duties at University of Toronto during his term as Mellon Professor.
Robson Research Assistant Jamie Smith is off to Genoa again this term for a second round of research in the archives, where she is tracking down fleeing fathers and hiding husbands.
Dr. Davide Panagia, currently a Fellow of the CRRS, has received a Canada Research Chair in Cultural Studies at Trent University. He will assume that position in July 2004. Before coming to the CRRS, Dr. Panagia held a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Johns Hopkins University. Before that, he was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University. Dr Panagia is the recipient of several awards and fellowships in the areas of teaching, political science, social theory, and historical inquiry from Johns Hopkins University, Cornell University, the University of Manitoba, and The Charles S. Singleton Center in Italy. His research explores political participation through cultural forms of democratic expression. One of his current research projects is entitled "Festivals of Freedom: Renaissance Republicanism and Popular Festive Forms" and examines how Renaissance festivals played a role in the development of republican ideals of freedom.
Our congratulations to Professor Joseph Black, sometime Curator of the CRRS, for having been granted tenure in the Department of English at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. In his usual laid-back way, Joe informs me that "I hadn't been particularly worried -- I kept forgetting about the meeting, in fact -- and it wasn't so much that I knew I had done enough, but that we have a really good process here at Tennessee: we have annual reviews and retention votes, sort of pain along the way, but it means that if there was any possibility tenure might be a problem I would have known about the problem two years ago." Self-effacing, as always, Joe adds "I've had various minor honors and publications, but nothing else major enough to be worth mentioning." Joe will be in Toronto in the first part of the year, so we eagerly look forward to seeing him again.
News items for future issues should go to Konrad Eisenbichler.
CRRS is located on the 3rd floor of Pratt Library.
For our hours of operation, and more specific contact information, click
here.
Mailing address:
71 Queen's Park Cr. E., Toronto ON, M5S 1K7
tel: (416) 585-4484 / fax: (416) 585-4430
email: crrs.vic@utoronto.ca
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about the CRRS, contact our Assistant to the Director, Dr.
Stephanie Treloar.
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