Karen Newman is the Owen Walker Professor of Humanities, Professor of Comparative Literature, and Professor of English at Brown University. A nationally known scholar of Shakespeare, early modern literature, and Renaissance drama, Newman's academic interests focus on Shakespeare, early modern letters and cultures, literary theory, and gender studies. In her writing, Newman engages questions of the globalization of culture and cultural translation, representations of gender in early modern cultures and texts, and the politics of reproduction, among others.
Newman earned her B.A. in English from Randolph-Macon Woman's College in 1970, and her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Comparative Literature from the University of California-Berkeley in 1972 and 1978, respectively. Newman has held various appointments at Harvard University, the Johns Hopkins University, and Williams College, and professorships at New York University and Brown University. She has taught courses on Shakespeare, British literature, 17th-century drama, Renaissance literature and cultural studies, the theory of literature, feminist theory, histories of the early modern body, and writing and gender, among other topics.
A prolific writer and lecturer, Newman has published and translated extensively. In 1985, Newman published her first book, Shakespeare's Rhetoric of Comic Character: Dramatic Convention in Classical and Renaissance Comedy. In it, Neman revises the history of comic characterization, expanding the analysis of the comic dramatist to a comic tradition that stretches back prior to Shakespeare. In her next work, Fashioning Femininity and English Renaissance Drama, Newman examines representations of women on stage and in printed materials to show the construction of the gendered subject and femininity in Elizabethan and Jacobean England. In Fetal Positions: Individualism, Science, Visuality, she traces the history of fetal images from the 16th century, arguing that modes of visualizing science have profoundly determined the "fetal politics" of contemporary abortion debates. In her next book, Cultural Capitals: Early Modern London and Paris, Newman delves into literary and cultural theory, and challenges the notion of a rupture between premodern and modern societies. She shows the continuity of themes of capital, commodity, crowd, traffic, and the street in early modern London and Paris and explores the impact of rapid urbanization on cultural production. Her most recent book, Essaying Shakespeare, is a collection of her essays on Shakespeare. She incorporates new historicism, gender studies, critical race studies, and globalization in her comprehensive analysis of how changing theoretical trends have shaped Shakespeare studies.
From 1987 to 1993 Newman served as director of the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women, where she developed and directed a series of yearlong seminars and interdisciplinary lectures and workshops involving post-doctoral fellows, Brown faculty, and graduate students. From 2002-2005 Newman was dean of the Graduate School at Brown University. She has held a wide range of academic appointments, including chair of the Department of Comparative Literature at Brown University. Newman also has held affiliations and positions in numerous professional organizations, including the Shakespeare Association of America, the Renaissance Society of America, the American Comparative Literature Association, and the Modern Language Association of America.
Newman is the recipient of numerous fellowships, grants, and awards from the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Association of University Women, the Folger Library, and the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, among others.
This collection contains the personal and professional papers of Karen Newman, scholar of Shakespeare, the Renaissance, and early modern culture, and Professor of Humanities and Professor of Comparative Literature and English at Brown University. Materials date from 1966 to 2018, and documents Newman's academic career and writings through correspondence, writing drafts, syllabi and lecture notes, and administrative files. Topics include pedagogy and administrative organization, as well as academic work on the globalization of culture and cultural translation, representations of gender in early modern cultures and texts, women's writing and history, Renaissance drama, and the politics of reproduction. Newman's papers might be particularly useful to scholars of Comparative Literature focusing on Shakespeare, Renaissance Drama, early modern culture, or gender and literary theory. This collection is arranged into 12 series. Series 1, BIOGRAPHICAL and Career Development, 1966-2011, includes personal correspondence, curriculum vitae, education files from her graduate education, and her tenure dossier. This series is arranged alphabetically by record type.
Series 2, CORRESPONDENCE, 1977-2016, includes general and professional correspondence related to Newman's writings and academic career. Topics include Newman's graduate experience at University of California Berkeley, fraternities at Brown University, and Shakespearian scholarship. This series is arranged chronologically by year.
Series 3, ADMINISTRATIVE, 1978-2015, documents Newman's administrative work at Brown University and New York University and is arranged into two sub-series.
Series 3, sub-series 1, Brown University, 1978-2015, includes correspondence, reports, agendas, and proposals, from Newman's various positions at Brown, namely on the Academic Priorities Committee, as Dean of the graduate school, and as Director of the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women. This subseries is arranged alphabetically by topic then by record type.
Series 3, sub-series 2, New York University, 2003-2010, includes correspondence and agendas from Newman's various positions in New York's University's English department. This subseries is arranged alphabetically by record type.
Series 4, ASSOCIATIONS, 1971-2014, documents Newman's tenure at the American Comparative Literature Association, the English Institute, the Folger Institute, the Modern Languages Association of America (MLA), and the Shakespeare Association of America. Materials include correspondence, meeting minutes and agendas, conference materials, and reports. Topics include the English Institute's "Tense/Times" conference, the MLA's "Committee on the New Variorum of Shakespeare," and the Shakespeare Association of America's seminar "Shakespeare Remains." This series is arranged alphabetically by association then by record type.
Series 5, CONFERENCES, 1988-2018, includes schedules, handwritten notes, and correspondence. Topics include "early modern women," marriage, "early modern translation," and Paris. This series is arranged alphabetically first by conference title then by record type.
Series 6, TALKS AND LECTURES, 1975-2017, includes draft lectures and related notes and research materials. Titles include "Body Politics," "Cultural Conquest, Shakespearean Celebrity and the Souvenirs du Theatre Anglais a Paris," and "Discovering Witches." This series is arranged alphabetically by title.
Series 7, TEACHING, 1970-2018, includes syllabi, readings, course proposals, handwritten notes, and teaching evaluations of Newman. Course topics include "culture and society in seventeenth century London and Paris," "women writing," "urban space and urban culture," and Shakespeare. This series is arranged alphabetically by course title then by record type.
Series 8, WRITINGS AND RELATED, 1974-2016, includes writing drafts, handwritten notes, correspondence, and offprints, pertaining to various projects. The most heavily documented projects are: Cultural Capitals: Early Modern London and Paris; Early Modern Cultures of Translation; Essaying Shakespeare; Fetal Positions: Individualism, Science, Visuality; and The Story of Sappho. This subseries is arranged alphabetically by project title then by record type.
Series 9, SUBJECT FILES, 1973-2012, contains research materials such as handwritten notes and clippings and is arranged into two sub-series.
Series 9, sub-series 1, People, 1975-2012, includes clippings, annotated readings, and handwritten notes related to individuals such as Thomas Browne, Anna Deavere Smith, and Gertrude Stein. This sub-series is arranged alphabetically by subject's last name.
Series 9, sub-series 2, Topics, 1973-2006, includes readings and typed and handwritten notes related to several of Newman's research interests such as "Cultural Capitals" and "Fetal Positions." This sub-series is arranged alphabetically by topic.
Series 10, PRINT MATERIAL, 1980-1999, primarily contains student publications and departmental journals published by undergraduate students at Brown University in the 1980s. Works by Newman do not appear in any of the print materials. This series is arranged alphabetically by title.
Series 11, ELECTRONIC RECORDS, 2006-2014, contains 3.5 inch disks and CDs. Topics include Cultural Capitals, Brown University's 2014 Louise Lamphere versus Brown University exhibit, and the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women. This series is arranged alphabetically by title on carrier.
Series 12, RESTRICTED MATERIAL, 1984-1992, contains files pulled from throughout the collection and include development correspondence and endowment material of the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women, as well as theses supervised by Newman. This series is closed until January 1, 2072 after which date it will open without restrictions and is arranged alphabetically by topic.
All researchers seeking to publish materials from the collections of the John Hay Library are requested to complete a Notice of Intent to Publish, prior to reproducing, quoting, or otherwise publishing any portion or extract from this collection. Although Brown University has physical ownership of the collection and the materials contained therein, it does not claim literary rights. It is up to the researcher to determine the owners of the literary rights and to obtain any necessary permissions from them.
Karen Newman papers, Ms.2011.040, Box [#], Folder [#], Pembroke Center Archives, John Hay Library, Brown University.
The collection is arranged into 12 series.
There are no restrictions on access, except for Series 12, Restricted Materials which is closed until January 1, 2072 after which date it will open without restrictions. The collection can only be seen by prior appointment. Some materials may be stored off-site and cannot be produced on the same day on which they are requested.
Gift of Karen Newman beginning in 2015.
This collection was processed in three batches. The first accession was processed in 2015. The second accession was processed in 2018. The third accession was processed in 2019.
The Brown University Library also holds the Pembroke Center Oral History Collection (OH.1S.2013.002) that captures the experiences of women faculty and students at Pembroke College and Brown University from 1911 to the present. View finding aid here: https://www.riamco.org/render?eadid=US-RPB-oh.1s.2013.002 Newman contributed an interview to this collection in 2014 that you can view here: https://www.brown.edu/initiatives/pembroke-oral-histories/interview/karen-newman-class-faculty