Renaissance drama or modern American
fiction. You may even have a subject,
such as Shakespeare and the classics or
Faulkner and rural Mississippi. But you
are still lacking something crucial.
Zwicker, Stanley Elkin Professor in the
Humanities. "What questions do you
want to ask? What kinds of evidence
will supply the answers? What archives
should you be planning to visit?"
Eliot Smith Professor of History, are
teaching a monthly seminar at the Folger
Shakespeare Library in Washington,
D.C., to help doctoral students in
history and literature learn more about
problem-based research. They are focus-
ing on an area familiar to both of them:
the vast array of materials available for
the study of early modern Britain.
particularly the intersection of politics
and literature. Hirst is an expert on
early modern British history, showing
how cultural and social issues have
shaped historical events. With such
similar interests, Zwicker and Hirst
have collaborated in the classroom and
in writing projects, currently on a study
of Andrew Marvell and his work.
writer's failure to take a problem-
solving approach. "We ought to be able
to answer the question: `Why should I be
interested in this?' That is a question
I don't think is asked often enough,
but it seems to me very important to be
here has to do with economics and culture
or race and gender or issues of identity.'"
has dealt with a number of key questions:
How did men and women in the
Renaissance view love, desire, selfhood
or identity? Did they think differently
about these categories than we do? How
did their religious beliefs or notions of
the body shape their attitudes?
the seminar, which is sponsored by
the Folger Institute, the educational
division of the Folger library. They travel
to the Folger once a month for research
and for the Friday afternoon seminar.
including Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, Harvard,
Yale, the University of Pennsylvania,
Rutgers, Boston University and the
University of Maryland. All of them are
writing dissertations in the early modern
field; their subjects cover a variety of
topics, from travel narrative to the
nature of numbers and astronomy;
from conceptions of childhood to heroic
figures in drama.
which provoked a spirited response.
Some of the students asked how we can
know what people in the early modern
period thought of their texts; one answer
is "marginalia," the notes that readers left
in the margins. But people often read
out loud during this period -- so perhaps
their reactions were also influenced by
the responses of the listeners or by the act
of reading the text?
evidence of acts and performances that
have disappeared, like the act of reading?"
says Zwicker.
institutions and use the lessons they learned
while formulating issues in their disserta-
tions and in their teaching. They also want
students to consider the interdisciplinary
character of much early modern scholarship:
Do colleagues in history, political thought
or history of science share some of these
concerns? How can their questions and
problems shape work in allied fields?
revolution that is powerfully changing
the ways in which we read, our access to
research materials and the kinds of
intellectual problems that interest us now
and will remain important in the future.
your work accessible and exciting -- and
not just to a few scholars who work in
exactly the same field of research," he says.
"We must engage people: in the academic
community, in the intellectual community
and readers more generally."