Renaissance Studies at UMass Amherst

The Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies advances fresh research in the early modern humanities by cultivating cultures of collaboration. 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.

The Renaissance of the Earth

The Renaissance of the Earth is a series of interdisciplinary research collaborations, undergraduate and graduate courses, hands-on workshops, conferences, and arts programming that consider how the early modern past helps us reshape our environmental future.

At the Kinney Center, historians and agricultural students work hand-in-hand with arts and literature students to transform a kitchen garden into a template for research and a rare book library into an archive for the imagination.

Upcoming Events

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Renaissance of the Earth Fellow, Hannah Gould, Wins Student Employee of the Year Award

Hannah Gould has been awarded the Chancellor’s Gerald F. Scanlon Student Employee of the Year Award in recognition of her outstanding research and public humanities projects at the Kinney Center and contributions to the Renaissance of the Earth project.  Hannah's double-major in English and Applied Plant & Soil Science illustrates the range of her interests, strengths, and cross-disciplinary ambitions. She is the very model of next generation interdisciplinary collaboration in sustainability initiatives, within and beyond UMass.

Image of 1485 Herbarius Latinus, and an artist's drawing. Both depict violets.

Medicinal Plants, Colonial Weeds, and Biodiversity Loss by Suzette Martin

Suzette Martin, Artist in Residence at the Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies, has written about her research into herbals at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., and her new project Herbarius: A New Herbal for the Anthropocene.