Amherst fellows

In January, the Folger Shakespeare Library hosts undergraduates from Amherst College in the Amherst-Folger Undergraduate Research Fellowship program. The Fellows conduct research at the Folger Shakespeare Library on a project of their choosing. In recent years, their individual research has been framed by readings, group discussion, and consultation with Folger staff. For more information, see Undergraduate research at the Folger.

Program History

The program began in 1996 under the direction of then-Librarian, Richard Kuhta.  At its inception, two to three fellowships were awarded annually, with sponsorship from the Friends of the Amherst College Library. Numbers of undergraduate fellows increased to as many as six in 2011.  In 2013, the Folger Institute assumed the onsite direction of the program, and at Amherst, the opportunity was newly situated in the Center for Humanistic Inquiry. Since that time, the program has included a short, intensive seminar, introducing  a focus on the materials of early modern textual production and the ways those physical aspects of form also shape our understanding of  both content and the social relations that texts mediate over time. The two-week seminar contains a mix of readings, work with Folger professional staff and fellows in residence, archival exercises, and discussion about wider applications outside the early modern period. 

If you are an undergraduate student at Amherst College and interested in applying for the program, you can find more information about the application guidelines and process on the Center for Humanistic Inquiry's website.

Past Fellows

2020s

2023

Regina Deri '25; "Trends in Early Modern English Spelling Reform: Analyzing Spelling Changes Computationally"

Xe Enfys '25; "Re/unmarking Transness: Queer Signifiers of Gender Variance"

Christian Pattavina '24; "Psychosexual Disillusionment in Macbeth: A Hermeneutical Retrospective"

Cole Warren '24; "Mapping Identities: Contextualizing Ethnographical and Cultural Depictions of mid-Atlantic Algonquian Peoples in English Illustrations and Literature"

Imari Yasuno '24; "Lamentations and Sin: The Representation of Collective Trauma in the European Early Modern Period"

Rachel Zhu '24; "Cordelia's Death: Women Corpses in Shakespeare"

2022

Olive Amdur '23; "Self, Surrounding, and the Commonplace Between: New Forms of Early Modern Climate Writing"

Anurima Chattopadhyay '24; "Native American Identity and Colonial Perspectives"

Sarah Lapean '23; "Representations of Rape in Early Modern Literature"

Muhammad Sabally '23; "Mental Health in the Early Modern Period"

Sydney Scanlon '22; "Understanding Illustrations of Othello"

2021

Sarah Edelson '23

Hildi Gabel '21

Maddie Hahm '23

Kate Lester '22

Anna Smith '22

2020

Eniola Ajao '21

Liam Downing '21

Olivia Gieger '21

Anisa Lacey '21

Siyi Li '22

Sarah Montoya '21

Stuart Robbins '20

Joshua Whang '21

Luke Williamson '21

2010s

2019

Jonah Davis '20; “Language, Speech, and Content: How Social Distinctions are Portrayed in Shakespeare”

Julia Gill '20; “Henry Norman Hudson and the Reading of Shakespeare in American Classrooms”

Elliott Hadwin '19

Alice Jackson '20; "The Infernal Comedy: Humour and Despair in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus"

Green Ko '21; "Rigidity and Flexibility of Knowledge: 17th-Century British Maps of India"

Chun Tak Suen '21; "Smoking Beyond the Modern Medicalized Discourse"

2018

Annika Ariel '19; "Romantic Depictions of Shakespearean Madness in Hamlet and King Lear"

Isabella Berkley '19; "How Travel Writing in the 17th-century Influenced England's Relationship with the Caribbean"

Jane Bragdon '20; "Implications of the Classic Representation of Ophelia at the Time of Her Suicide"

Ariella Goldberg '19; "A Study of Secrets: The Impact of Renaissance Cryptography"

Ann Guo '20; "Foodways as a Lens into Conceptions of Racial/Ethnic 'Others'"

Phuong-Nghi Pham '18; "The Role and the Staging of Music in Renaissance Theater"

2017

Alura Chung-Mehdi '18; "The Role of Food in Shakespeare’s Plays"

Nayereh Doosti '18; "The European Perspective on Early Interactions with Persia (Iran)"

Ben Fiedler '17; "The Influence of Early Modern European Understandings of Africa on Shakespeare's Portrayals of Africa"

Isabel Miller '17; "Childhood in Renaissance England"

Brian O’Malley '18; "The Magic Quill"

Spencer Quong '18; "Portrayals of 'Nothing'"

2016
As featured in the Amherst College News

Irisdelia Garcia '18; "Focus, Virtuality, and Othello"

Emma Hartman '17; "Manuscript Illumination and the Art of the Book in 19th and Early 20th-Century England"

Catherine "Cat" Lowdon '17; "The English Parlor and Privacy: An Examination of Possible Uses of the Rotherwas Room" [title provided by cataloger]

Kevin Mei '16; "The Falling Sickness and its Remedies"

Jacob Pagano '18; "Shakespeare in China: Enchantment and Humanism during the New Culture Movement (1915-1921)"

Crystal Park '17; "Roots of Imperialism in Costume in the 16th and 17th Century"

2015

Jiwoon "Kristine" Choi '16; "Reliving the Renaissance through Francis Bacon: A Personal Approach to the Development of Empiricism"

Sophie Chung '17; "Advent of Newspapers in Early 17th-Century"

Noel Grisanti '17; "Small Latin and Less Greek: Classics and Education in Shakespeare’s England"

Yeon Woo "Heather" Lee '15; "The Relationship between Words and Texts in Manuscripts" [title provided by cataloger]

Matthew Randolph '16; "The Early History of Maryland in the Transatlantic World"

Caryce Tirop '17; "Biblical Translations during the Protestant Reformation" [title provided by cataloger]

2014

Richard Altieri '15; "All the Quixotes: Translating Cervantes"

Daria Chernysheva '16; "The Earliest Translations of Hamlet in Imperial Russia"

David Dickinson '16; "The Readings of Terence in Elizabethan Classrooms"

Amar Mukunda '15; "Quantitative Analysis of Mid-Range Characters' Speech in Shakespeare" [title provided by cataloger]

Sophia Padelford '15; "The Elizabethan Reception of the Classical Orator"

Madelin Parsley '15; "'Do You Mark That?': Staging Shakespeare's Eavesdroppers"

2013

Elizabeth Alexander '14; "Othello Comparisons"

Devon Geary '14; "Trauma in the Name of Glory: A Folger Fellowship Reading Project on British Colonialism"

Jeffrey Moro '14; "Media in Translation"

Mark Roh '15; "The Interaction Between Shakespeare's Second Tetralogy of History Plays and the Political Climate in Elizabethan England"

2012

Zachary Bleemer '13; "Marketplace Aesthetics in the Age of Taste"

Terrence Cullen '13; "Representations of the Exotic in English Travel Writing from the Late Middle Ages to the Renaissance"

Matt Hartzler '13; "T.J. Hind: Contemporary & Historian of the Booth Brothers"

Lester Hu '13; "Recusant Music Theory: Modal Ordering in an Edward Paston Manuscript Partbook"

Jordan Roehl 2012; "The Folger Library Collection and the Inclusion of African Americans"

2011

Dan Kim '12

Miranda Marraccini '12

Colleen O’Connor '11

Elisabeth Siegel '11

Elaine Teng '12

2010

Aaron Aruck '11; "Social Mobility and the British East India Company"

Max Kaisler '11; "Seneca's Ideas on Madness and Medicine in Renaissance England"

2000s

2009

Jeffery Blevins '09

Miranda Hannash '09

Ryan MacDonald '10

2008

Emanuel Costache '09; "Edmund Spenser: Studied Barbarity in The Shepheardes Calendar"

Jamie Ling '09; "English Grammar Books, 1580-1720"

Emily Wright '09; "Politics of the Irish Language"

2007

Meghan Kemp-Gee '07; "Magical Language in Macbeth, A Winter's Tale, Richard III, Hamlet, The Tempest and A Midsummer Night's Dream"

Normandy Vincent '08; "Catherine de Medici and the Politics of Visual Imagery"

2006

Sarah Courtney '06; "Fairy Tales in the Literary and Didactic Traditions"

Patrick McGrath '07; "Lycidas: Milton and Virgil"

Hadley Miller '06; "Noblewomen in the National Legal System in 13th-Century England"

2005

No Fellowships were awarded

2004

Mihailis Diamantis '04; "George Herbert and Renaissance Wit"

Nick Pedersen '04; "Shapes of Metaphysical Poetry: Structure and Meaning in 17th-Century Verse"

2003

Benjamin Baum '03; "The English Succession Crisis, 1553"

Daniel Liss '03; "Hamlet II.2"

Katharine Liu '03; "Othello and Social Context"

2002

Daniel Shore '02; "Milton and his Antinomian Contemporaries"

Rikita Tyson '02; "Staging Practices in Twelfth Night and As You Like It"

Ema Vyroubalova '02; "Lyricism, Performativity, and Theatricality in Richard II and Richard III"

2001

Umit Dhuga '01; "Catullus in the Renaissance"

Stacy Kitsis '01; "English Origins of Russian Children's Literature"

2000

Suzanne Feigelson '01; "The Evolution of Twelfth Night in Performance"

Jenna Owens '01; "The Renaissance Masque: An Invocation of a Utopian Society"

1990s

1999

David Goldstein '00; "The Reception of Pindaric Odes in the Renaissance"

Justin Snider '99; "Milton's Satan"

Christine Wong '99; "Countess of Shrewsbury: English Women and the Courts, 1500-1850"

1998

David Y. Kim '99; "Catesby, Linnaeus, and the Languages of Representation in Natural History"

Rachel Slaughter '98; "Reflexivity in Shakespeare's Plays"

1997

Michael Giannelli '97; "Thematic and Stylistic Relationships between Ariosto's Orlando Furioso and Cervantes' Don Quixote"

Robert Reeder '97; "John Dryden"

1996

Gregg McHugh '96; "Milton's God"

Lauren A. Whitehurst '96; "The Trickster Figure in Shakespeare"