Arthur F. Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies
Promoting interdisciplinary scholarship to explore connections between the early modern world and today
The Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies advances fresh research in the early modern humanities. Our mission is to develop and promote multicultural, diverse, relevant, and timely programming that fosters the best of interdisciplinary engagement in the humanities. Both a research center and library, the Center is home to manuscripts, rare books, and monographs, sponsored lectures, seminars, conferences, community classes, theater, and concerts. Visiting professors, post-doctoral scholars, artists-in-residence, and researchers enrich the global network of our community.
Founded in 1998, the Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies is a research institution serving a dedicated community of scholars, students, artists, and the general public. Our mission is to support and promote interdisciplinary scholarship and public-facing humanities programming with the goal of exploring connections between the early modern world (c. 1400-1700) and our own.
The Center cultivates original and timely research by gathering diverse scholarly communities at public conferences, workshops, lectures, classes, and performances. Our extensive research library is open to the public for use in our reading room, where rare book exhibits explore challenging historical and literary questions in accessible ways. The historical gardens and orchards on our 28-acre estate flourish as collaborative, hands-on laboratories for the study of the environmental humanities, past and present. New teaching agendas in the creative arts take shape on our outdoor stage, as artists in residence showcase productions of Renaissance and contemporary drama in the summer months.
Our planned 2020-2025 programming is inspired by the theme, “The Renaissance of the Earth.” Drawing together our gardens with the literary, botanical, agricultural, and earth science materials in our special collections, interdisciplinary research teams will dig into the past for how we might imagine alternative forms of habitation and cultivation of the earth. I invite you to explore our current and upcoming programs and welcome you to contact me with suggestions for future events.