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The Folger Institute

Early modern print of a scholar working in a cluttered room

The Folger Institute is a center for advanced research in the early modern humanities at the Folger Shakespeare Library. Founded in 1970, the Institute gathers interdisciplinary communities of scholars for collections-based research. The Institute sets agendas, models best practices, and tests new methods for scholarship. Together with colleagues around the Folger, the Institute seeks to bring public audiences together with scholarly ones as we discover more about the cultures and legacies of the early modern world.

The Institute supports the curiosity-driven hunches that send scholars to our archives for evidence and to the Folger’s community spaces for discussion and feedback. Institute offerings facilitate the concentrated work of reading and writing, and provide access to modern scholarship, digital resources, and sociable spaces for trial and redirection and recommitment. We take seriously the questions that interrupt received wisdom, exceed easy answers, and open the scope of our understanding of early modernity with all its resonances in our own conflicted world.

Learn more about the Institute’s work

Drinking with Shakespeare: Early Modern Tavern Tokens
A labeled envelope sits beside a creased open piece of paper and a rusty looking coil on a background of tan felt
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Drinking with Shakespeare: Early Modern Tavern Tokens

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Author
Leah Hampton

Artistic Fellow Leah Hampton showcases the Folger’s collection of Early Modern bar tokens

Early Modern Piracy: A Matter of Perspective
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Early Modern Piracy: A Matter of Perspective

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Author
Ania Upstill
Folger Deep Dives: Memory, marginalia, and the art of reading, V.b.32 and beyond
A small face with a beard within a large red letter O
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Folger Deep Dives: Memory, marginalia, and the art of reading, V.b.32 and beyond

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Author
Amy Cooper

Folger fellow Amy Cooper explores the relationship between memory and the doodles of faces, dragons, and people in the margins of books.