About the Center

The Center's first premise is that no single critical approach, historical perspective, scholarly method, or pedagogical strategy can do justice to early modern texts and contexts. Its second premise is that no single academic program format can address the varying schedules and responsibilities of college and university professors from across the nation. For these two reasons, the Center aims to present and encourage a wide variety of ways to better understand the literature of the early modern period and to do so through a number of institutes, seminars, conferences, lectures, and colloquia. Generous support from the National Endowment for the Humanities has helped to make many of these programs possible, particularly the NEH summer institutes for university faculty and teachers and the year-long NEH humanities institutes.

The Center has sponsored numerous NEH summer institutes, academic-year NEH humanities institutes, semester-long seminars, weekend workshops and conferences, weekend faculty seminars, public lectures, and informal midday colloquia. Each NEH summer institute has enrolled college and university faculty members from around the country.