Funds are available for KU graduate students and faculty to participate in the Newberry Library's Center for Renaissance Studies programs or to conduct research in pertinent collections at the Newberry. By a reciprocal arrangement, KU graduate students and faculty may participate in Folger Institute programs or conduct research at the Folger Library.

Applications for a travel grant or requests for information may be submitted at any time during the year to Geraldo de Sousa, Department of English. Grants to visit the Newberry Library will not exceed $500 and grants to visit the Folger Library will not exceed $600. Reimbursable expenses include airfare (at the lowest published rate) and lodging. An applicant may receive only one grant in an academic year. Upon return from research trips, applicants are asked to submit all original receipts, together with the reimbursement form, to Geraldo de Sousa.

The funding for KU's participation in the consortium is provided by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Hall Center for the Humanities.

Members of the KU Newberry Library Consortium Committee are Patricia Manning (chair); Geraldo de Sousa (secretary); Sally Cornelison; Luis Corteguera; Bruce Hayes.

The Newberry Library Center for Renaissance Studies serves scholars through the use of the Newberry's internationally renowned collections in the late medieval and Renaissance periods. Founded in 1979, the Center offers a wide range of programs at the graduate and postdoctoral levels, including intensive training in the techniques (i.e., paleography, bibliography, codicology, textual editing) essential for primary research in these fields; interdisciplinary seminars; workshops; and conferences. Located at the Newberry Library on the near north side of Chicago, the Center also provides a locus for a lively community of scholars who come from all over the world to use the Library's collections of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts and printed books, including two thousand incunables, holdings in the humanities, philology, and the earliest critical historiography, French political pamphlets (1560-1649), the history of learning, printing, and scholarship, and the course of European expansion into the Americas.

The Center is organized as a consortium of thirty-nine mostly midwestern universities, which contribute to its administration and oversee the planning of programs through representatives on the Executive Committee. The aims of the Center are to integrate the resources of the Newberry into the educational process and to make available programs that are not feasible for institutions to mount alone.

In addition to lectures and conferences, the Center for Renaissance Studies offers consortium seminars during the academic year. These courses permit an instructor to direct an advanced seminar in his or her area of specialization by drawing from a larger pool of participants than may be available on a singe campus, and they serve as a first-hand introduction to the Newberry's holdings of manuscripts and early editions in areas of its special strengths. Center for Renaissance Studies seminars are conducted as symposia for scholars with common interests and goals, rather than as formal courses, and each participant is encouraged to develop his or her own research interests within the limits, broadly interpreted, of the general topic designated by the seminar leader. Graduate students taking a course for credit should make arrangements with their own institutions. Faculty auditing is encouraged. Funds are available for KU faculty and graduate students to participate in all Center programs.

The Center for Renaissance Studies collaborates with the Folger Institute in Washington, D.C., itself a consortium of thirty-eight east-coast institutions. By a reciprocal arrangement, faculty members and graduate students from either consortium are eligible to participate in programs offered by the other.

For additional and ongoing information, see the website for the Newberry Library Center for Renaissance Studies.

The Folger Library Institute can be reached at: http://www.folger.edu/institute/index.cfm.

Applications for a travel grant
may be submitted at any time during the year to
Geraldo de Sousa, Department of English