News

An NEH Summer Institute for College and University Teachers

This five-week institute will be directed by Claire Sponsler, Professor of English at the University of Iowa, and hosted by the Folger Shakespeare Library.  This institute offers a comparative study of ritual and ceremony across related cultures from 1300 to 1700.  It builds on anthropological theories of the ubiquitous role of ritual and ceremony and the impact of that work in performance studies.  Testing assumptions about influence and exchange among national traditions and local contexts, it seeks a new understanding of the processes and effects of cultural hybridity and assimilation.

Topics include:

* Civic rituals, ceremonies, and drama (in London, Rome, and Paris)
* Music, liturgy, and church ritual
* Royal entries, processions, and pageants
* Ritual vis-a-vis visual and print culture
* Ceremonies of empire in the New World
* Childbirth and other domestic rituals
* Early modern court festivals of the Holy Roman Empire
* Depictions of New World natives in European festivities
* Carnivals and concepts of performance
* The migration of European ceremonies to the New World

Visit the Folger Shakespeare Library for more information.