CCT Alumni Spotlight: Melanie Bender

Posted in Announcements

CCT is excited to highlight Melanie Bender Martin (CCT ‘06), the first ever Director of Marketing and Communications at the newly reopened Folger Shakespeare Library.

The Folger Shakespeare Library is home to the world’s largest Shakespeare collection and has recently reopened following a four-year renovation which reimagined the historic building with new accessible amenities. This renovation included an addition of two new exhibition halls that will allow visitors to engage directly with the Folger’s collection, including 82 of Shakespeare’s First Folios which are now displayed together publicly for the first time. It also includes new accessible entrances, a learning lab and a collaborative research space. Along with the new addition, accessible garden entrances, a new learning lab, and collaborative research space are among the visitor amenities and building enhancements added during the four-year construction project. 

When the Folger welcomed Director Michael Witmore in 2011, he recognized that the Folger could stand to improve its accessibility. The Folger existed in DC, but was not really a part of the DC community. The renovation sought to address the physical barriers to access, and the work the Folger staff did while the renovation was ongoing enabled that sense of access to continue inside the building. This is where Melanie and her expertise comes in.

As the Director of Marketing and Communications Melanie is a liaison between the Folger and its constituents, communicating what the Folger has to offer, liasoning with media, and amplifying the amazing things the library is doing that the larger community might not be aware of. Melanie uses her position to leverage the information in a way that creatively tells the story of the Folger to better reach their audience– essentially making sure the information is being communicated in its most accessible format.

Along with liasoning with media, Melanie also manages the Folger digital platforms and collaterals including maps, brochures, and digital displays and does a lot of work in making sure the materials are accessible to a large audience. The Folger feels that for any cultural organization, accessibility is fundamental and visitors should be able to engage with the texts regardless of their ability level or whether they are native or nonnative English speakers. Melanie’s position was created to help bridge the gap between the Folger’s work and the audience it might not be reaching.

While it is home to the largest collection of Shakespeare, the Folger is also a hub of technology, communication, community, and conversations around the humanities. Melanie’s CCT background helps her fully realize this potential and communicate it to the public. In her words, “I cannot stress this enough, I think that the entire CCT experience helped prepare me. Because this is a program that wants you to draw those connections between technology and how we communicate and how those two things interact with each other and that’s exactly what we do here.”

Melanie explained that CCT made her a good candidate for the position because while she was no expert on Shakespeare, she had honed an interdisciplinary approach that allows her to draw connections between a wide variety of different subject matter. Melanie says, “It’s hard to get a foothold into the museum and cultural organizations world… I came from a side door. Compared to my colleagues I knew nothing about Shakespeare. But I knew about marketing, about brand building. Those are things I could bring to the table, but more than that I like to learn. Being open to learning is what opens those pathways to the doors before us. I think CCT students have these skills and the ability to think about things like how we can explain a text in a way that primes people to engage with a performance– how to make the texts more accessible.” 

One of the Folger’s new exhibition halls is home to a replica printing press that would have been used in printing Shakespeare’s First Folio. Upon viewing it for the first time, she says she immediately thought of her experience in a CCT course with Dr. Michael Macovski that studied texts throughout the ages,

“While the press is a technology that’s over 400 years old, when you think about it through a CCT lens, this is a technology that was completely revolutionary for its time… This was instrumental in the production and dissemination of information and I couldn’t help but think about how this has translated into other technologies like computers and the leaps that have been made. Think about how we use the tech of today to talk about the work of Shakespeare… Technology creates a seismic shift in the way in which we communicate with each other and I think CCT gave me the framework to really look at and analyze that.”

Another way she uses her analytical framework is engaging with the texts through both the theatrical and editorial perspectives. For Melanie, “ a strong text is one that can stand outside of the context that it was created in… In working at the Folger, my brilliant colleagues have shined a light on the problems that have emerged. When Shakespeare is performed today, I think about the different ways in which the editor shapes the text. Being an editor is a subjective job, not an objective task. The decisions you make are subjective and have a lens. When we study a text you are influenced, whether consciously or not, in the ways that the person who edited the text has chosen to edit it, whether that be stage directions or footnotes.” 

One of the things that Folger does so beautifully is engaging its audiences with the material in a way that feels accessible for them. For Melanie, this might be connecting the technologies used by Shakespeare to our current socio-technical landscape or wondering how each new production of King Lear shapes the meaning of the text, for others it might be attending a Hip-Hop and Spoken Word Event or Queer Culture Night. Whether you’re a Shakespeare buff or not, the Folger has something for everyone. 

For more information on Melanie, please check out her LinkedIn. More information about the Folger’s collection and upcoming events can be found on their website.