Ayesha Mukherjee is a sophomore English major and current Gillespie Curatorial Fellow in Shakespeare & the Book.
Can you tell me about the fellowship and what it entails?
The Gillespie fellowship takes place at the Arthur F. Kinney Center for Renaissance Studies, right at the edge of campus. The Center holds an archive of rare books dating from the 1500s to the 1700s, especially those contemporary to the English Renaissance, i.e. when Shakespeare was writing his plays.
About a year ago, the Center was loaned a private collection concerning Shakespeare, most notably a selection of excerpts taken directly from Shakespeare’s 1623 First Folio, the first time Shakespeare was ever put into print. My work involves studying this collection, and will culminate in a curated exhibition of a selection of these books.
My work at the Center is very self determined. I am particularly interested in the materiality of the book as a physical object. Every week I come into the Center with a particular question or topic based on my independent research, and the librarians and I select a handful of related books which I then study.
An interesting thing I have currently been working on is studying the ornamentation surrounding early modern books — those little symbols/drawings surrounding the textblock on the page. A really fun example is Edmund Spenser’s “The Shepherd's Calendar” which is held at the Center and contains a myriad of little printed flowers.
What interested you in this fellowship?
I have always been interested in Shakespeare, especially after taking high school drama class where I read and performed a number of his works. Since then, I’ve always been on the lookout for local Shakespeare-related things (plays/exhibits/talks/etc.). I’m from Baltimore, and we have a great Shakespeare theatre down there that I’m a patron of (shout-out to the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company!). So when I saw the poster for this opportunity, it piqued my interest.
I am also an amateur bookbinder. I got into the hobby a couple of years ago, and it has influenced my research interests in this fellowship. As a bookbinder, you look at a text in a completely different way than most people. You become aware of the choices and artistic decisions that go into making a text legible for its readers. A text can’t exist without a book to put it in. How these books are constructed, from typography to binding to illustrations, is really important to the ideas they convey. This is even more important in Shakespeare’s era, when the printing press had only been invented a century ago. Printers were real people hand setting individual type and who often had a lot of control in how a book got published.
Did any of your classes prepare you for your fellowship work?
I just switched over to the English department this year, so I haven’t taken many English courses yet, but absolutely! English 358 — The Romantic Poets (taught by Suzanne Daly), while not directly Shakespeare related, was great for situating myself within the British literary canon. English 269 — American literature after 1865 (taught by Brenna Casey) was one of the first English classes I’d taken since high school, and enabled me to develop a lot as a writer.
I’m currently taking English 421 — Advanced Shakespeare (taught by Jane Deganhardt) which has been wonderful for all things Shakespeare studies, especially in considering current scholarship in the field.
I was also a participant in the First Semester Global Launch program conducted by UMass, where I studied abroad in London. There, I took a Museum Studies course based around London’s museums, which has been super beneficial in thinking about my current exhibition.
What are you looking forward to in future semesters?
Most immediately, I am participating in the Oxford Summer Seminar this summer. I am really excited for this opportunity, not only to return to the UK, but also to take advantage of Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries. Aside from being a world class library with a massive selection of historical texts, I am specifically interested in their medieval manuscript collection. As the Kinney Center focuses on the Renaissance, the books held there are mostly printed texts. At Oxford, I want to begin my study of the handwritten era that preceded the printing press.
In my last two years at UMass, I am aiming to complete a thesis within the English department concerning the subjects I have been studying as a Gillespie scholar. I want to take my work further, and it’s great that UMass allows me to do that.
In terms of classes, at UMass I’m particularly looking forward to taking a class on James Joyce conducted by Katherine O’Callaghan! Professor O’Callaghan is a great teacher, and I’ve been meaning to take a crack at Joyce for a while now. Outside of UMass, and more related to book studies, Smith College has a great selection of classes concerning book history/materiality, and even an entire concentration on the subject. Through the Five College Consortium, I’m hoping to take a few of these classes in my junior and senior year.
What advice do you have for English majors who want to make the most of their time at UMass Amherst?
Be proactive about taking advantage of the university. UMass is huge, and there are so many opportunities for you if you just look at a bulletin board. The Pioneer Valley is a great place to be an English major. In addition to our own amazing and supportive faculty (who you should definitely speak to in office hours or otherwise!) you have the entirety of the Five Colleges at your disposal, with world-class scholars teaching classes at the forefront of their fields. The English major is flexible, and is very supportive of motivated and engaged students. Institutions like the Kinney Center, the Frost Library, and the Smith Museum of Art empower you to explore your own interests and follow your own passions in the department, if you choose to use them.