Scholarly Seminars
Newberry Scholarly Seminars provide spaces—whether virtual or at the library—to discuss new humanities research as it develops. Seminars are conversational and free and open to faculty, graduate students, and interested members of the public, who register in advance to request papers.
Seminar Series
This seminar, which debuted in 2013, provides a forum for works in progress that explore the history of American Literature.
The seminar is sponsored by the Department of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago. The seminar’s co-coordinators are Walter Benn Michaels (UIC) and Kenneth Warren (University of Chicago).
Seminars meet on select Fridays from 3-5pm. Please check events for location and format details.
This seminar provides a forum for works-in-progress that explore topics in Latino/a and Borderlands studies.
The seminar’s coordinators are María Eugenia López-García (University of Illinois at Chicago), Ivón Padilla-Rodríguez (University of Illinois at Chicago), and Emiliano Aguilar (University of Notre Dame).
The seminar’s co-sponsors are Indiana University’s Latino Studies Program, Northwestern University’s Program in Latina and Latino Studies, The Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame, the Center for Latino Research at DePaul University, the Katz Center for Mexican Studies at the University of Chicago, and the University of Illinois at Chicago Latin American and Latino Studies Program.
The Eighteenth-Century Seminar is designed to foster research and inquiry across the scholarly disciplines in eighteenth-century studies. It aims to provide a methodologically diverse forum for work that engages ongoing discussions and debates along this historical and critical terrain. Each year the seminar sponsors one public lecture followed by questions and discussion, and two works-in-progress sessions featuring pre-circulated papers.
The seminar is organized by Timothy Campbell (University of Chicago), Lisa A. Freeman (University of Illinois at Chicago), Jason Farr (Marquette University), and Alicia Caticha (Northwestern University).
The Center for Renaissance Studies European Art Seminar considers work in art history that explores painting, sculpture, graphic art, architecture, caricature, manuscript illumination, book arts, and material culture.
The coordinators for the Seminar in European Art are Suzanne Karr Schmidt (Newberry Library), Lia Markey (Newberry Library), and Walter Melion (Emory University).
The European Art Seminar is sponsored by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.
This seminar provides a forum for scholarship-in-progress in the area of German studies. The seminar is particularly interested in papers that cross disciplinary boundaries and that reconceptualize the materials and conventions of German Studies as a field, including beyond the frames of the German language and nation state.
The seminar’s coordinators are Alice Goff (University of Chicago), Imke Meyer (University of Illinois Chicago), Sophie Salvo (University of Chicago), Anna Souchuk (DePaul University), and Lauren Stokes (Northwestern University).
The seminar is generously sponsored by Germanic Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Germanic Studies at the University of Chicago, the Department of Modern Languages at DePaul University, and the Department of History at Northwestern University.
This seminar is a forum for works-in-progress in the history of capitalism, broadly defined. We seek proposals from scholars at all levels. These proposals may consider a variety of subjects, including the history of race and racism, gender and feminist studies, intellectual history, political history, legal history, business history, the history of finance, labor history, cultural history, urban history, and agricultural history.
The seminar’s sponsors are the history departments of Loyola University Chicago, Illinois State University, and the Karla Scherer Center at the University of Chicago. Elizabeth Tandy Shermer (Loyola University Chicago) and Andrew Hartman (Illinois State University) are the co-coordinators of the 2023-2024 seminar.
The Newberry Irish Studies Seminar brings together scholars to advance understanding of Irish culture both nationally and globally.
The Irish Studies Seminar is supported by Mr. and Mrs. William F. Mahoney and Christine and Michael Pope, the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies at the Keough School of Global Affairs, and the DePaul University Irish Studies Program.
This series is coordinated by Bridget English (University of Illinois at Chicago), Colleen English (Loyola University Chicago), and Keelin Burke (Newberry Library).
If you have questions about this seminar series, please email Keelin Burke.
This seminar provides a forum for works in progress that explore the history of working class people, communities, and culture; class and state policy; unions and popular political movements; and other related topics.
The seminar’s co-sponsors are the history departments of DePaul University, Northwestern University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, The Karla Scherer Center for the Study of American Culture at the University of Chicago, Loyola University Chicago, and the Labor and Working-Class History Association.
Co-coordinators are Peter Cole (Western Illinois University), Colleen Doody (DePaul University), Liesl Orenic (Dominican University), and Elizabeth Tandy Shermer (Loyola University Chicago).
This Center of Renaissance Studies seminar brings together interested scholars to read and discuss pre-circulated papers on aspects of Milton studies.
The Newberry’s Milton Seminar is organized by Stephen Fallon (University of Notre Dame), Christopher Kendrick (Loyola University Chicago), Paula McQuade (DePaul University), and Regina Schwartz (Northwestern University).
This Center for Renaissance Studies seminar provides a forum for new approaches to classical, medieval, and early modern studies, allowing scholars from a range of disciplines to share works-in-progress.
Organized by Timothy Crowley (Northern Illinois University), Megan Heffernan (DePaul University), Lydia Barnett (Northwestern University), and Christopher Fletcher (Newberry Library).
If you have any questions about the submission process or the seminar in general, please email Christopher Fletcher.
The Religion and Culture in the Americas Seminar explores topics in religion and culture including social history, biography, cultural studies, visual and material culture, urban studies, and the history of ideas. We are interested in how religious belief has affected society, rather than creedal or theological focused studies.
The Seminar’s organizers for 2022-2023 are Karen Johnson (Wheaton College), Malachy McCarthy (Claretian Missionaries Archives), Christopher Allison (Dominican University), Christopher Cantwell (Loyola University Chicago), Kevin Schultz (University of Illinois Chicago), Darren Dochuk (University of Notre Dame), and David Lantigua (University of Notre Dame).
The Religion and Culture in the Americas Seminar is co-sponsored by the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame, the McGreal Center at Dominican University, the History Department at Loyola University, the University of Chicago Divinity School, University of Illinois at Chicago, and Wheaton College.
D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies
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