Publicly Engaged Humanities Research-Creation & Transdisciplinary Exchange
Founding Director — Renaissance of the Earth ❦ https://www.renaissanceoftheearth.com/
The Renaissance of the Earth revolutionizes what it means to engage the early modern past with questions about our environmental future. Crucially, we are committed to exploring those connections that present us with the most challenging legacies: extractive colonialism, racism, forced human migration, and the asymmetries of environmental devastation around the globe. Through a range of interdisciplinary research collaborations, undergraduate and graduate courses, hands-on workshops, curated exhibitions, and arts programming, it puts students, artists, scholars, and invested members of our New England community at the center of an interdisciplinary research project with the goal of discovering diverse avenues for creating sustainable and equitable life.
Founding Director — Artist in Residence Program
Artists are catalysts for interdisciplinary programming at the Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies and play a central part in the Renaissance of the Earth project. Three regional artists a year are selected by a Board of Advisors to create original work that draws upon and opens conversations onto the archival materials in our collections and the terrestrial diversity of our landscape. During their residency, artists develop and share their work, offer masterclasses, performances, and exhibits; engage students, researchers, and the public; and create space for creative inquiry and collaborative relationships to flourish.
Member, Research Team — Anthropocene Lab. UMass Amherst, 2023-2024.
At UMass Amherst, an interdisciplinary group of humanists, scientists, social scientists, and artists seek new interdisciplinary narratives about the Anthropocene in an effort to engage the deep past and shared futures, humans and non-human communities. Supported by a Provost Interdisciplinary Research Grant.
Co-Organizer — “Thinking Earth” Seminars. UMass Amherst, 2023-2024.
Cross-campus “Thinking the Earth” seminars offer interested faculty and graduate students a platform to engage one of the most contested and noteworthy developments in intellectual history. The ways we imagine, speak or write about, or represent the Anthropocene are of critical importance at a time of climate change. Collaboration with Malcolm Sen (chair), Thad Miller, Rob DeConto, Sandy Litchfield, and Regina Spector. October 27, 2023.
Principal Investigator — Community Shakespeare. UMass Amherst, 2019-2021.
Funded by Mass Humanities, which receives support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and is an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Community Shakespeare seminars are offered every semester at the Kinney Center and are free and open to the public. By way of a two-year MassHumanities Grant, we expanded to include artist-in-residence invitations to directors and dramaturges as well as invited guest speakers.
Organizer — "Shakespeare, Race, and America . . . not necessarily in that order." UMass Amherst, 2018.
A collaborative series of arts programming with Mount Holyoke College featuring Keith Hamilton Cobb's American Moor (Nov 7 – 14, 2018). Performance, Artist Campus Residency, Public Talk, Actor’s Studio & Scholarly Round Table. Five Colleges collaboration with Professor Amy Rodgers, Mount Holyoke College. Keynote: Kim F. Hall. Special Exhibit at the Kinney Center, Fall 2018. ❦ Interviews and news stories in Los Angeles Review of Books ; The Massachusetts Daily Collegian; Daily Hampshire Gazette
Team Member — Early Modern Conversions. McGill University, Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas, SSHRC, Canada Foundation for Innovation & other partners. 2017-2019. The Conversions project has brought together an international team of scholars and artists to study the first great Age of Conversion, 1400-1700. People in the 21st century also live in a time of globalization and massive change that sees the uncontrolled growth of youth radicalization, conversion-centered violence, and a multi-billion-dollar personal transformation industry. The Conversions project brings historical scholarship and the creative arts to urgent questions that face us now as we enter the second great Age of Conversion.
Co-Organizer — Early Modern Migrations: Exiles, Expulsion, and Religious Refugees, 1400-1700. University of Toronto, April 19-21, 2012 An international & interdisciplinary conference. 90+ participants from one dozen countries. Collaboration with Nicholas Terpstra. Hosted by Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies. Victoria College, University of Toronto. ❦ https://crrs.ca/pastevents/early-modern-migrations/
Co-Chair — Early Modern Exiles. Jackman Humanities Institute Working Group. University of Toronto, 2010-2012. Co-Chair Nicholas Teprstra, Department of History.
Dramaturge — Robert Daborne’s, A Christian Turn’d Turke (1612). University of Toronto, 2012.
Collaboration with Director, Noam Lior, and The Centre for Performance Studies in Early Theatre & Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies, University of Toronto. Performance dates: April 19-22, 2012. ❦ Performance Video