Scholarly Programs

Folger Institute scholarly programs gather advanced scholars to work together around specific topics relating to Shakespeare and his time. Program planning for the Folger Institute’s scholarly programs is guided primarily by the Folger Institute Consortium, the Center for Shakespeare Studies, and the Center for the History of British Political Thought.

Learn about current scholarly program offerings

Learn about past programs

The Folger Institute Consortium

The Consortium is a collaborative endeavor of the Folger Shakespeare Library and more than 40 universities in the U.S. and abroad. Its programs are largely funded by annual membership fees.

The Folger provides grants-in-aid, administrative staff, meeting space, access to its collections, and scholarly programming to Consortium affiliates. Each member university nominates a faculty representative to sit on the Consortium Executive Committee, which is charged with program planning and oversight. Find out more about the Consortium on Folgerpedia, or view the Consortium's member schools and executive committee.

The Center for Shakespeare Studies

The Center for Shakespeare Studies posits that no single critical approach, historical perspective, scholarly method, or pedagogical strategy can do justice to Shakespeare's texts and contexts. Instead, the Center aims to broaden Shakespeare scholarship and bring different approaches into conversation.

Founded in 1986 by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Center presents a wide variety of programming, including NEH Summer Institutes for College and University Faculty and conferences supported by NEH Collaborative Research grants. The many products of the Center's scholarly work include scholarly publications, audio recordings of the Shakespeare Birthday Lectures, and Primary Sourcebooks. For more information and to access the archive of past programs, please visit the Center for Shakespeare Studies’ page on Folgerpedia.

The Center for the History of British Political Thought

The Center for the History of British Political Thought sponsors programs and publications that have remapped the main patterns of political thought and discourse in a major political culture over three seminal centuries. It was established in 1984 through a National Endowment for the Humanities grant, and sustained with a 1996 endowment from the late Dr. Barbara Taft. A number of past programs have resulted in publications such as The Varieties of British Political Thought, 1500–1800. Find out more about the Center on Folgerpedia.