The Renaissance Area

Overview

The Notre Dame English Department provides graduate students outstanding opportunities for learning and advanced research in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies.

Our program in Renaissance and Early Modern offers small classes and independent studies with distinguished faculty, whose scholarship and teaching engage a wide range of approaches, including intellectual history and historical approaches, contemporary theory, history of the book, and drama from textual and performance perspectives. Students participate in the Renaissance Area Seminar, which offers students the opportunity to discuss their research with faculty and other students on a regular basis. Students are also encouraged to participate in seminars and workshops at the Newberry Library in Chicago and the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC.

Shakespeare Survey, published by Cambridge University Press, is currently based at Notre Dame. Each year, a graduate student working in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies has the opportunity to work on the journal, as an assistant editor. Each student in the program also has the opportunity to develop and teach an upper level undergraduate course in Renaissance / Early Modern literature.

With faculty guidance and considerable institutional resources - six-year funding for each student in the graduate program in English, library collections, grants-in-aid to attend events at the Newberry and Folger Libraries, travel support for research and conferences, grant and fellowship opportunities – graduate students can engage the latest topics, approaches, and methods in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies.

Renaissance and Early Modern Studies are complemented by Notre Dame’s strengths in other areas of study, including Irish Studies, Text-Media Studies, Religion and Literature, Medieval Studies, Eighteenth-century Studies, the Program in History and Philosophy of Science, and faculty working Renaissance and Early Modern Studies in History, Theology, and Romance Languages.