Lott Spends Summer in Nation’s Capital Studying Shakespearian Works Through Folger Institute Fellowship

Ursinus College Associate Professor of American Studies, African American and Africana Studies, and English Patricia Lott spent her summer as a research fellow at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. The prestigious fellowship, which was first offered in 1935, supports individual scholarly and artistic research that further enhances the understanding of the early modern world.

The Folger, which first opened in 1932, houses the largest collection of Shakespeare’s works alongside major collections of rare books, manuscripts, and art from the early modern period, which encompasses the 16^th through 18^th centuries. The fellowship gave Lott the opportunity to access this expansive database to help her finish her book, Memory Ruins: Slavery, Commemoration, and Wastecraft in the Antebellum U.S. North.

Although her research is not Shakespearian in nature, the Folger holds many artifacts and readings that pertain to her work from the English perspective.

“A lot of the issues I’m taking up include whether or how to emancipate enslaved people and looking at the broader conversation with English and northern publics,” Lott said. “They have a lot of holdings pertaining to slavery in the British West Indies, blackface minstrelsy—which has its origins in the U.S. Northeast—and their role in the aftermath of gradual emancipation.”

The Folger’s vast resources allowed Lott to explore a completely different lens for her book.

Lott’s book editors encouraged her to apply to the fellowship after she participated in a workshop at the Folger.

She applied in January 2024 and was awarded the fellowship in April, completing it on August 30.

Each year the Folger Institute awards research fellowships “to create a high-powered, multidisciplinary community of inquiry,” according to its website. The researchers shared interests in history, literature, art and performance, philosophy, religion, and politics.

On a day-to-day basis while in D.C., Lott began her work when the institute’s reading room opened around 9:30 a.m. While working there, Lott and other fellows could request the staff to pull specific resources from the vault, or they could explore the open stacks to find their own materials. While a lot of the resources are digitized, some older books existed in their original forms.

“Depending on the age of the book, they make you use little cradle things, and you have to be very delicate,” Lott said. “There was one book from 1658, and I didn’t want to touch it.”

Lott said she often worked until 1:30 p.m., and then either met with other fellows or intellectuals in D.C. or returned to her apartment near Capitol Hill to continue writing.

This fall, Lott is continuing her studies at Yale University in New Haven, Conn., where she is a visiting associate professor at the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition.