Call for Applications for Mellon Summer Institute in Spanish Paleography at Harry Ransom Center

Call for Applications for Mellon Summer Institute in Spanish
Paleography at Harry Ransom Center

Applications are being accepted by the Harry Ransom Center for the
Mellon Summer Institute in Spanish Paleography, occurring in Austin
June 6-24, 2011. The institute is an opportunity for scholars to
acquire intensive training in reading late medieval and early modern
manuscripts of Spain and Latin America.

Application materials must be received by Tuesday, March 1, 2011.
Information and forms are available at http://budurl.com/f5vx . Late
applications will not be reviewed.

Manuscripts from the collections of the Ransom Center, a humanities
research library and museum at The University of Texas at Austin, and
the university's Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection will be
used to supplement and enrich course content. Attention will also be
given to research tools for using the archives of other manuscript
repositories.

This institute will enroll 15 participants, and the course will be
conducted in Spanish. First consideration will be given to advanced
graduate students and junior faculty from colleges and universities in
the United States and Canada, but applications will also be accepted
from professional staff from museums and libraries and from
independent scholars. Participants, who must have advanced Spanish
language skills, will receive a stipend to help defray the costs of
housing and travel.

Participants will learn to transcribe a variety of Spanish documentary
and book scripts found in primary sources from Spain and the Americas
in the late medieval and early modern periods, ranging from the 15th
to the 18th centuries.

Dr. Consuelo Varela, of Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos de
Sevilla, will lead the institute. Varela has published extensively on
Christopher Columbus, the early years of the discovery of America and
Spanish voyages across the Pacific. She taught the Summer Institute in
the Spanish and Hispanic-American Archival Sciences at the Newberry
Library in Chicago in 1996 and 2002.

The institute is part of a four-year initiative for vernacular
paleography supported by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
and headquartered at the Newberry Library Center for Renaissance
Studies.

If you have any questions, please contact Anna Chen by phone at (512)
471-5365 or by e-mail at anna.chen@mail.utexas.edu.