Radel and Speitz selected for National Humanities Center residencies

Furman University English professors Nicholas F. Radel and Michele Speitz have been selected for summer residencies at the National Humanities Center (NHC) in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.

The NHC residency is a four-week program aimed at giving humanities scholars an opportunity to make progress on a current research project or to jumpstart a new one.

Nick Radel, Furman Department of English

Radel and Speitz will join approximately 40 humanities scholars from universities across the country who will work together this summer at the NHC. They will be assisted in their work by the NHC’s team of librarians who draw on resources from the extensive holdings of surrounding universities as well as collections housed in libraries and archives around the world.

Radel will use the residency to complete a 25,000-word Supplementary Introduction that updates the scholarly volume “Shakespeare, Richard II: The Critical Tradition” co-edited by Radel and Charles Forker (Indiana University, Bloomington) and originally published by The Athlone Press in 2001. The editors at Bloomsbury/Arden invited Radel to write the comprehensive introduction that summarizes the major trends in scholarship about “Richard II” from approximately 1995 to the present—a period in which nearly 800 books and articles have been written, as well as innumerable productions worldwide.

Michele Speitz, Furman Department of English

Speitz will apply her time at the NHC to complete a book chapter “The Seismograph” in her monograph, “Technologies of the Sublime: Romantic Materialisms and the Mechanical Supernatural.” The book, for which she has already drafted three main chapters, “reorients how we understand romantic models of ecological thought by tracking two related but forgotten features of romantic aesthetics—the figure of the sublime machine and the trope I denominate the mechanical supernatural,” said Speitz in her proposal to the NHC.

Through generous support from The Duke Endowment, Furman is an institutional sponsor of the NHC.

Through the NHC program, faculty from participating institutions are able to experience a concentrated period of supported research in a world-renowned setting. Scholars who have participated in the NHC’s programs have described it as an “intellectual nirvana” and have often remarked that the contemplative space and intellectual community provided by the NHC contributed significantly to the ultimate quality of their work, which includes over 1,500 published books.

Learn more about the National Humanities Center. Or for more information, contact Furman’s News and Media Relations office at 864-294-3107, and vince.moore@furman.edu.

The National Humanities Center is located in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina

About the National Humanities Center
The National Humanities Center is the world’s only independent institute dedicated exclusively to advanced study in all areas of the humanities. Through its residential programs for scholars, the NHC provides researchers with the resources necessary to generate new knowledge and to further understanding of all forms of cultural expression, social interaction, and human thought. Through its education programs, the NHC strengthens teaching on the collegiate and pre-collegiate levels. Through public engagement intimately linked to its scholarly and educational programs, the NHC promotes understanding of the humanities and advocates for their foundational role in a democratic society.