Mission Statement

The Massachusetts Center for Renaissance Studies is a research facility of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The Center supports the research, teaching, and dissemination of all aspects of literature and culture in the Early Modern Period (ca. 1400-ca. 1700).

The Center welcomes all qualified scholars and students to do specialized research with our unique collection of manuscripts, rare books, and secondary monographs. The Center also provides a vibrant calendar of events during the academic year, offering graduate classes, community classes, lectures, concerts, play readings, and more to our community members.

Graduate Studies @ the Center

Each academic year the Center welcomes on average four to eight new graduate students in English who plan to focus their studies on aspects of Renaissance life and/or literature. The Center offers a Graduate Student Commons (office space at the Center), and access to all Center resources for research, including advising and information about Renaissance scholars throughout the Five College area.

Graduate seminars are held in the Center’s Reading Room and Cheney Room; each year the Center hosts a Graduate Student Conference, organized by the students, for young scholars from around the world. The Five College Faculty Seminars in Renaissance Studies bring noted academics from other universities to the Center to speak and meet informally with graduate students.

Students interested in Renaissance drama are encouraged to become involved in the Renaissance Center Theater Company’s many activities, including performances of 16th and 16th – century dramatic materials, and educational outreach projects for regional schoolchildren.

About the Center

The Massachusetts Center for Renaissance Studies occupies the grounds of the former 28-acre estate of Winthrop Saltonstall Dakin, a local attorney, and his wife, Janet Wilder Dakin, the youngest sister of the playwright Thornton Wilder. The research institute and classrooms are housed in their brick home built in the style of a Renaissance cottage in Shakespeare's Warwickshire. It is also the site for conferences , seminars, lectures, dramatic performances, and concerts.

For contact information and directions to the Center click here.