Michael Witmore · 2024 Honoree

When the Folger Shakespeare Library re-opens in June no one will look on with more satisfaction than Michael Witmore who, as Director, presided over the four-year, $80 million renovation of the building that is both an internationally known repository of scholarly material and a cherished neighborhood landmark. The newly-accessible building, with dramatically expanded opportunities to experience the Library’s collection of Shakespeare First Folios, will be a concrete expression of Michael’s conviction that the humanities in general – and Shakespeare in particular – are of vital interest to more than scholars. They speak to us all and to our never-ending quest for meaning.

It was as a high school student in a suburb of Boston, more interested in playing drums in a heavy metal band than in literature, that Michael first experienced Shakespeare. In an honors English class he read Othello, the biblical book of Job, and the Odyssey and, somewhat to his surprise, found that he related strongly to the very concrete situations presented in these works. He found Othello a compelling figure and, as he says, he “caught the bug” of exploring real life via the language used to communicate experience. This quest took him to Vassar College, where he wrote a senior thesis on Othello and Epistemology (the study of knowledge – what it is and how we acquire it), and ultimately to a MA and a PhD in rhetoric at the University of California at Berkeley. 

Michael was the author of several books and a tenured professor at the University of Wisconsin studying, among other things, a field known as “digital humanities,” – the patterns and meanings revealed by applying the computerized study of language to texts – when the invitation came to apply for the job at the Folger. Initially hesitant, he realized that his attraction to non-traditional fields of study made him a good fit for the Folger as it wrestled with the ongoing challenge of adapting a canonical white writer to a changing and multiracial world. Plus, he had had a fellowship at the Library and had lived on Capitol Hill long enough to know he loved the neighborhood.

So it is with some wistfulness that, once the festivities surrounding the re-opening of the Library are over, Michael will leave DC. He plans to move to Colorado where he will take a deep breath, commune with loved ones, and seek inspiration for the next chapter in his life.