About the Center

Mission Statement

The Center for British and Irish Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder promotes research and teaching in all aspects of British and Irish life, culture, and history. The Center, the only one of its kind in the country, advocates an interdisciplinary approach to British and Irish Studies, joining the humanities and performing arts, the social sciences, and the professional fields. Within the University, the Center provides an intellectual focus for faculty members and students at all levels. It plays a vital role within its geographical region, serving people at colleges and universities throughout the Rocky Mountain/High Plains area. The Center also brings members of the academic world into contact with individuals and organizations in the community who are interested in contemporary or historical Britain and Ireland.

Research

The research activities of the Center are based upon the exceptional collections of British and Irish Studies materials held by the University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries. In addition to standard primary and secondary works, journals, and British government documents, acquired over the past century, the libraries recently have been purchasing microfilmed/microfiched sets of original manuscripts, early books and newspapers, and personal papers from British archives. Some of these materials are available nowhere else in North America. Our holdings constitute the finest research collection in British and Irish Studies within this region and one of the finest in the country. They are open to use by students and faculty members at the University of Colorado, by visiting academics, and by members of the community. We welcome outside users of the research materials. The British and Irish Studies Room at Norlin Library contains microfilm readers/printers and a computer for use by people working with the collections.

Access the Center for British and Irish Studies collection finding guides.

Education

Within the University, the Center contributes to teaching and research in a variety of ways. We offer an undergraduate Certificate in British and Irish Studies and have developed a set of interdisciplinary seminars for graduate students. We provide travel fellowships for students who need to study or do research in Britain, and we have a fund to support photocopying of archival materials for students. The Dean's Writing Prizes in British and Irish Studies reward outstanding papers by undergraduate and graduate students. The Center hosts a range of lectures, seminars, and performances by distinguished visitors, many of them from Britain and Ireland.

Community

The Center is also involved with the wider community. Working with groups and companies in the state that have British interests, we help to organize such projects as "The United Kingdom in Colorado Week" (June 1990), featuring a variety of cultural, political, and economic events. British art loaned by local collectors is displayed in the British Studies Room and in special exhibits. Members of the community are welcome to become members of the Center and to join us at our lectures and at receptions after special events, performances by British and Irish groups, or art exhibits.

People

	Executive Director Jillian Heydt-Stevenson, English & Comparative Literature/Humanities Associate Professor of English, Jillian Heydt-Stevenson has a joint appointment in the Departments of English and of Comparative Literature/Humanities. Her research interests include Romanticism, feminist and gender studies, the Romantic novel, and visual/verbal studies. She is the Associate Editor of the Cornell Wordsworth Last Poems of William Wordsworth and the author of Austen's Unbecoming Conjunctions: Subversive Laughter, Embodied History (Palgrave/MacMillan, 2005).
	Managing Director Michael Zimmerman, Center for Humanities and the Arts (CHA) Michael E. Zimmerman is director of the Center for Humanities and the Arts (CHA), and managing director of the Center for British and Irish Studies. His research has focused on late modern German philosophy, especially Heidegger and Nietzsche, and environmental philosophy. For more than twenty years, he also held a clinical appointment as professor of psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Tulane Medical School. Winner of many teaching awards at Tulane University, Zimmerman has just co-authored a book, Integral Ecology, which develops a multidisciplinary approach to resolving environmental problems.
	CBIS Library Liaison/Coordinator Thea Lindquist Thea Lindquist, the Center's Library Liaison, is an Assistant Professor and the History and Germanic Language & Literature Librarian in the University Libraries. She earned her MA in Library and Information Studies and PhD in History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research interests span from electronic library resources for teaching and research in early modern studies to early modern English religious and diplomatic history.
Executive Board:
	Ann Carlos, Economics
	Katherine Eggert, English Associate professor of English, Katherine Eggert specializes in English Renaissance literature, cultural studies, and gender studies. She received her BA from Rice University, and her MA and PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. She is the author of Showing Like a Queen: Female Authority and Literary Experiment in Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), as well as articles on other Renaissance topics and Shakespeare on film. Currently she is writing a book with the working title of Unnatural Magic: Alchemy and the Illicit Discourses of Renaissance England.
	Jane Garrity, English Associate professor of English, Garrity specializes in 20th-century British literature, modernism and empire, cultural studies, feminist theory, and Anglo-American lesbian literature and theory. She earned her PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. Her recent publications include "Virginia Woolf, Intellectual Harlotry, and 1920s British Vogue" and "Mediating the Taboo: The Straight Lesbian Gaze." Her book, Step-Daughters of England: British Women Modernists and the National Imaginary, was recently published by Manchester University Press.
	Susan Kent, History Professor Kent specializes in modern British history, focusing on gender, culture, imperialism, and politics. Her publications include Sex and Suffrage in Britain, 1860-1914 (1987); Making Peace: The Reconstruction of Gender in Interwar Britain (1993); and Gender and Politics in Britain, 1640-1990 (1999). She is currently at work on a co-authored book on the Igbo Women's War of 1929 and is finishing up a manuscript entitled Aftershocks: The Politics of Trauma in Interwar Britain (Palgrave, forthcoming). She can be reached at Susan.Kent at Colorado.EDU
	Elizabeth Robertson, English Associate Professor of English and former CBIS Executive Director, Robertson specializes in Medieval literature and feminist theory. She earned her Ph.D. from Columbia University. She is the author of Early English Devotional Prose and the Female Audience (1990) and editor of Representing Rape in Medieval and Early Modern Literature (w/ Christine Rose) (2001) and Chaucer's Religious Tales (w/ David Benson) (1990). With Stephen Shepherd she has edited the Norton Critical Edition of Piers Plowman (forthcoming 2004), and she is the editor of The Katherine Group: Middle English Religious Prose for Women (TEAMS, forthcoming 2004). She has published essays on medieval English literature, religion, and gender and sexuality in in a variety of journals and collections including Studies in the Age of Chaucer and Speculum.
	Jeremy Smith, Music Jeremy L. Smith, Associate Professor of Musicology, is a specialist on the English Renaissance with a secondary interest in Progressive Rock. He has published articles in Journal of American Musicological Society, Music & Letters, Computing in Musicology, Notes, Fontes Artis Musicae, New Dictionary of National Biography, MGG and New Grove. His monograph Thomas East and Music Publishing in Renaissance England was published in 2003 by Oxford University Press and his edition of William Byrd’s “Psalmes, Sonets and Songs,” Vol. 12 of the Byrd Edition, general editor Philip Brett, was published in 2004 by Stainer & Bell. Research for the latter volume was supported in part by a NEH Collaborative Research Grant. In 2001 Smith was awarded the Richard Hill (MLA) prize for his article in Music & Letters. In 2006 he was awarded a Provost’s Award for his article in JAMS. Smith is a founding member of the editorial board of a forthcoming journal Music & Politics, for which he is slated to publish an article in the inaugural edition. He is also currently working on a book project titled Close to the Flame: Music and Politics in Elizabethan England.
	James Symons, Theater Professor of Theatre, Symons earned his Ph.D. from Cornell University. He has held a number of leadership and Chair positions both at the university and national levels. His Colorado Shakespeare Festival credits include directing Richard III, 2002; Henry V, 2000; Richard II, 1998; Coriolanus, 1995; The Tempest, 1993; Julius Caesar, 1991, and The Taming of the Shrew, 1989. His CU directing credits include The Cherry Orchard, 2002; The Bacchae, 1990; The Elephant Man, 1986, Plenty, 1985; and Trojan Women, 1985.
Staff:
	Paula Anderson, Center for Humanities and the Arts (CHA) Paula Anderson is the Center's Administrative Assistant. She is also the administrative assistant for the Center for Humanities and the Arts (CHA).
	Michele Speitz Michele Speitz is the Center's Graduate Assistant and a doctoral candidate specializing in 19th-century English Literature.