The National Association of Scholars has just awarded Dr. Eleanor Schneider the 2018 Fraser Barron Memorial Scholarship in Renaissance & Western History. Dr. Schneider received her Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame in 2015, and is currently a Fellow at the Liberty Fund. She will use the scholarship to further her research on the transformation of English humanist education during the Reformation.
The Fraser Barron Memorial Scholarship in Renaissance & Western History furthers the serous study of the Renaissance within the context of Western history as a whole. Scholars are intended to inquire into the nature, the timing, and the effects of the Renaissance, with a particular concern for its relation to the broader intellectual, religious, political, social, and cultural transformations of the West. Previous awards went to Robert Scott Dupree (University of Dallas) for his study of settings of Shakespearean music and Stephen Smith (Hillsdale College) for his literary criticism of Shakespeare.
Dr. Schneider intends to follow up on her dissertation research by exploring precisely how institutions of Catholic humanist education in England survived—or failed to survive—the financial, institutional, and religious stresses of the Protestant Reformation. She will examine why parents sent their children to humanist schools; how teachers appealed to the broader society that funded schools and scholarships through a variety of funding mechanisms; how humanist schools were transformed by the double conversion from Catholic to Protestant and from local support to state support; and how the student population changed during the Reformation.
Dr. Schneider will use the Scholarship to visit the archives of Durham Cathedral, Sedbergh School, and Christ Hospital of Horsham. These three institutions will allow her to include archival material from a monastic school (Durham Cathedral), a school that went through process of losing its endowment (Sedbergh school), and an entirely new Reformation-era foundation (Christ Hospital).
The NAS is delighted to be able to award the Fraser Barron Memorial Scholarship to Dr. Schneider, whose research so ably forwards Fraser Barron’s bequest.
Image Credit: Hannah Stuckwisch
