The Folger Consortium

The Folger Institute was founded in 1970 as a unique collaborative endeavor of the Folger Shakespeare Library and two Washington-area universities. In the succeeding years, its horizon has expanded from the local to the regional to the international, and the consortium now numbers 41 colleges and universities, including the University of Chicago. With support from such agencies as the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute offers seminars, conferences, and colloquia in fields represented in the Folger Library collections.

Folger Institute programs are conducted as gatherings of advanced scholars oriented toward common goals, and a hallmark of Institute seminars is the bringing together of junior and senior scholars, from advanced graduate students to tenured faculty. Participants, who represent a range of backgrounds and points of view, are encouraged to find their own connections to the topic designated for investigation in any given seminar, and they are encouraged to pursue their individual research interests within the limits of that topic.

Through informal gatherings at the routine break for afternoon tea or through occasional midday and evening colloquia, discussion is further encouraged across disciplinary and institutional boundaries, with participants introduced not only to their fellow seminar members but also to the larger Folger community of Fellows, resident scholars, and staff.

Interested University of Chicago faculty and advanced Ph.D. students are invited to apply for the Folger Institute’s programs. For more information on the Folger Institute, please contact the University of Chicago’s representative on the Folger Institute Consortium’s Executive Committee and Nicholson Affiliate, Professor Noémie Ndiaye.

[Images/text taken from] The Bodleian First Folio: digital facsimile of the First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays, Bodleian Arch. G c.7. URL: http://firstfolio.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/