Monthly Archives: May 2012

Australia and Shakespeare – Call For Papers

In 2012, the London Olympics year, Shakespeare’s Globe curated a festival of Shakespeare productions entitled Globe to Globe. Productions came to the Globe from all over the world – a total 37 plays in 37 different languages. Early in the planning process I was contacted and asked if I knew of any productions in an Australian Aboriginal language; I did not. However, the question unsettled me. While there is a provocation in performing Shakespeare in a language other than English, the Globe’s contribution to the Cultural Olympiad risked constructing what Helen Gilbert and Jacqueline Lo identify as ‘thin’ cultural cosmopolitanism, which boasts a ‘patina of international sophistication’ and often purveys ‘an array of highly ethnicised individuals and groups’ (Performance and Cosmopolitics 8-9). More particularly, the Globe’s cosmopolitan project effectively made it extremely unlikely that Australia could make a major contribution to the festival; in the end, Perth-based Yirra Yaakin Theatre Company accepted the Globe’s invitation to present sonnets in the Noongar language as part of multi-lingual reading of all 154 sonnets. Given that, as far as I know, the only Australian Shakespeare theatre production to tour to the UK, Shakespeare’s home territory, is the Bell Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors in 2006, the Globe’s approach was perpetuating the habitual marginalisation of Australian Shakespeare performance from the perspective of UK theatre. As a consequence of this, I am proposing an issue of Australian Studies which seeks to showcase as well as interrogate Shakespeare and Australia in performance, in film, and in culture. It will include a wide-ranging interview with Geoffrey Rush on his experiences of Shakespeare as a performer, director and a member of the audience. It will seek to map out and to analyse the variety, the contradictions and the excitement of Australia’s conflicted interactions with Shakespeare.

Essays might explore:

  • Histories of Shakespeare in Australia – in production, in education, in rehearsal, in marketing, as cultural capital
  • Practitioners’ work with Shakespeare – directors, designers, performers, actor trainers etc
  • A particular company/ venue/ approach (Stand Up For Shakespeare; the UWA Fortune theatre; The Australian Shakespeare Company; the Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble)
  • A particularly influential/ provocative/ popular production
  • Australian adaptations/ remixes/ spin offs (for example, Popular Mechanicals)/ ballets (for example, Helpmann’s Hamlet)
  • Touring Shakespeare – Australian and overseas companies
  • Shakespeare and applied or community contexts: prisons, detention centres, schools
  • Shakespeare and indigeneity
  • Shakespeare and translation
  • Original Practices in Australia
  • Shakespeare and Australia film – from the Romeo and Juliet in The Sentimental Bloke to Geoffrey Wright’s Macbeth
  • Shakespeare’s contemporaries in Australia
  • Shakespearian practitioners working on Shakespeare across the world (for example, Elijah Moshinksy, Judith Anderson, Keith Michell)

Australian Studies is a refereed online journal hosted by the NLA. Submission guidelines appear at: http://www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/australian-studies.

The deadline for submission of essays is 31 March 2013.

Elizabeth Schafer
E.Schafer@rhul.ac.uk

UQ Postdoctoral Research Fellowships – Call For Applications

The University of Queensland invites applications for a limited number of Postdoctoral Research Fellowships commencing in 2013, to be awarded to persons wishing to conduct full-time research at the University in any of its disciplines. In particular, the scheme aims to attract outstanding recent doctoral graduates to the University in areas of institutional research priority.

Applications must be received by the appropriate School, Centre or Institute by 28 May 2012.

For full details and all related documentation please visit the following website: http://www.uq.edu.au/research/rid/grants-internal-postdoc

For further information please contact:
Matt Browne,
Administration Officer, Grants (Internal Schemes).
Email: UQFellowships@research.uq.edu.au
Phone: +61 07 3346 9016.

Orderic Vitalis: New Perspectives on the Historian and His World – Call For Papers

Orderic Vitalis: New Perspectives on the Historian and His World
St John’s College, University of Durham
9-11 April 2013

Conference Website

The life and works of Orderic Vitalis (1075-c.1142) are widely regarded as providing some of the most important evidence for our understanding of the history of the Anglo-Norman world. Orderic is known principally for his extensive thirteen-book Historia ecclesiastica (completed 1141); a text which has long been recognised as a treasure trove of factual information and contemporary opinion. The work has been explored at length by some of the most influential Anglo-Norman and French scholars of the last three centuries, and today no survey of contemporary church, political or social history is complete without consultation of Orderic’s narrative. However, while many have used Orderic as a source for enquiry, the Historia‘s sheer size and scope have ensured that many of its major themes remain largely untouched.

The organising committee of the Durham University Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies conference Orderic Vitalis: New Perspectives on the historian and his world invite abstracts from prospective speakers. This event, funded by the Durham University IMRS, will provide a forum for the dissemination of new research into the life and works of the monastic scholar, Orderic Vitalis. With plans already in place to publish a ‘companion’ volume on Orderic, this conference will aim to re-invigorate existing work and open new lines of research around a figure whose legacy has proven vital to scholars of the Anglo-Norman world.

While the conference welcomes papers on a wide scope of topics, we particularly invite abstracts for papers relating to the following areas:

  • The manuscript history of Orderic’s Historia ecclesiastica
  • Orderic’s scholarly and scribal career away from the Historia ecclesiastica
  • Orderic’s travels, administrative activities, and studies away from Saint-Évroul.
  • Orderic’s world view and his networks of knowledge-exchange and transfer.
  • The ‘rediscovery’ of the Historia ecclesiastica by early modern audiences, and Orderic’s subsequent influence on the development of Anglo-Norman studies.

Prospective speakers are invited to submit abstracts of between 250-300 words, and should also include their contact details (name, affiliation, e-mail address). The deadline for submissions is 1 September 2012. Limited bursaries towards travel costs will be offered to postgraduate speakers. If you wish to apply for one of these, please indicate this when submitting an abstract.

For further information about the conference or to submit an abstract, please email Charlie Rozier, at: c.c.rozier@durham.ac.uk or Dan Roach at: dr229@exeter.ac.uk, or visit: www.dur.ac.uk/imrs/conferences/orderic_vitalis/

Voice and Voicelessness in Medieval Europe and Beyond – Call For Papers

Voice and Voicelessness in Medieval Europe and Beyond
Boston University
February 28-March 2, 2013

Contributions are invited from prospective participants in an interdisciplinary conference examining the practices and values attached to the human voice in medieval cultures. An edited volume is planned.

The question of “voice and voicelessness” engages with several important trends in medieval studies today, including issues of law and representation; theology and embodiment; historicist models of subjectivity; the poetics and esthetics of marginality; and the linguistic dynamics of intercultural encounter. The first goal of the project is to examine the axis proposed by the conference title as approached by scholars working on medieval literatures, theology, law, art history, history, philosophy, and musicology. The project’s second, methodological goal is to seek a common ground of interdisciplinary engagement by examining how distinct areas of scholarly endeavor approach a problem of universal resonance but elusive definition. This pursuit will be further enriched by the conference’s international composition, so that disciplinary, methodological, and national habits of thought and argument will be brought into dialogue. The topic of voice and voicelessness engages with questions related to the expression of self and respect for an other, and so lends itself particularly well to this multi-level encounter. Contributions that are transnational or transdisciplinary in nature, or which interrogate the relations between contemporary and medieval thought will be especially appreciated.

Prospective contributors should send a 500-word abstract to kleiman@bu.edu no later than July 15, 2012, using the keyword “Voice” in the message title. Please include a recent CV with your submission. Papers as delivered should be 30 minutes in length. The language of the conference and publication is English. Selected participants will be notified no later than July 30, 2012.

View this call for papers online: http://www.bu.edu/medieval/voice-and-voicelessness-in-medieval-europe-and-beyond

National Library – Handwritten: 10 Centuries of Manuscript Treasures – Podcast Download

Earlier this year, Professor Margaret Manion, the renowned, Melbourne-based international scholar of the art of the medieval manuscript gave a wonderfully knowledgeable and entertaining lecture about the remarkable group of medieval manuscripts in the National Library’s exhibition Handwritten (which ran from 26 November 2011-18 March 2012). Handwritten featured 100 unique manuscript treasures from the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Berlin State Library).

Professor Manion’s excellent lecture (along with several others of interest about the exhibition Handwritten, please check the website for details) is now available from the Library’s podcast page.

Fashioning the Early Modern: Creativity and Innovation in Europe 1500-1800

Fashioning the Early Modern: Creativity and Innovation in Europe 1500-1800
The Lydia & Manfred Gorvy Lecture Theatre
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Friday 14 and Saturday 15 September, 2012

Conference Website

Explore questions of fashion in Early Modern Europe. How and why did certain goods such as wigs, new textiles, ribbons, ruffs and lace become successful while others failed? How far did these goods travel and how were they transmitted across linguistic, social and geographic borders? These questions remain relevant and demonstrate how the study of creativity and innovation as an economic and cultural force in the past helps shape our understanding of the same issues today.

Taking Early Modern fashion seriously, this conference will explore three key themes: Innovation, Dissemination and Reputation. Invited speakers include, Lesley Miller, John Styles and Evelyn Welch.

The conference is being held in collaboration with Queen Mary, University of London and funded by HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area).

To download the conference programme click here.

Revenge and Gender from Classical to Early Modern Literature – Call For Papers

Female Fury and the Masculine Spirit of Vengeance: Revenge and Gender from Classical to Early Modern Literature
5-6 September 2012, University of Bristol, UK

Keynote Speakers

Professor Alison Findlay
Professor Edith Hall

Revenge is often thought of as a quintessentially masculine activity, set in a martial world of blood feuds and patriarchal codes of honour. However, the quest for vengeance can also be portrayed as intensifying passionate feelings traditionally thought of as feminine. In such instances revenge does not confirm a man’s heroic valour, but is a potentially emasculating force, dangerous to his reason, self-mastery, and gender identity. Such alternative ways of viewing revenge are also relevant when the avenger is a woman. To what extent is revenge deemed to be natural or unnatural to a woman, and what is its effect upon her psyche and perceived gender?Does the same impulse which effeminizes a man make a woman dangerously masculine? And how should we view the indirect ways that women influence retribution, such as through mourning, cursing, or goading? Are these an important means of female agency, or do they suggest women’s exclusion from active revenge, reinforcing traditional gender roles? Are certain acts of violence interpreted differently if the perpetrator is a man or woman, father or mother, son or daughter?

This conference aims to explore these questions, re-evaluating the complex and varied ways that gender impacts the performance and interpretation of revenge. Proposed papers may take up any intersection of revenge and gender in texts from Classical to early modern literature, and can focus on individual texts and periods or take an interdisciplinary or cross-temporal approach. Topics may include, but are not limited to: the ways in which revenge bolsters, threatens or transfigures an individual’s gender identity and/or role within the family; how individual acts of vengeance reinforce or undermine homosocial or female bonds; personifications of revenge; how the relationship between gender and revenge are reconfigured in a text’s translation, reception, and reinterpretation over time; the ethical, cultural and social implications for the ways in which revenge is gendered.

We invite proposals (250 words) for papers addressing these questions. Submissions from postgraduate students, and early career researchers are welcomed. Pre-formed panel proposals will also be considered. Abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats with the following information and in this order: a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract. Please send your proposals or any queries to Lesel Dawson: lesel.dawson@bristol.ac.uk

Deadline for proposals: 31 May, 2012.

View this call for papers online: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/english/events/revengeandgender/index.html/view

New Journal: Shakespeare Institute Review – Call For Papers

The Shakespeare Institute Review is a new online academic journal, which is funded by the University of Birmingham College of Arts and Law. It is run by four research students at the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon, UK.

Students at this institution, and on other postgraduate Shakespeare programmes, are invited and encouraged to contribute short papers for publication. Each issue of the journal will be themed.

We thought it exhilaratingly inappropriate, and so irresistible, to signal the birth of this journal with an issue looking at death.

Students are encouraged to submit papers, between 1,500 and 2,500 words, on topics relating to death, mortality and religion in Shakespeare’s plays, or elsewhere in the Early Modern period.

Possible topics might include, but are not restricted to:

  • Critical examinations of the way that various of Shakespeare’s characters deal with death, or die. This could include close-reading, comparative analysis, and analysis from a specific theoretical position (Marxist, feminist, etc.).
  • Historical studies of how mortality or religion was understood in the early Modern period, and of how Shakespeare makes use of (and plays off) those understandings in his plays.
  • Considerations of the political, ethical, religious, spiritual and existential significances of mortality or religion in the Early Modern period, and for Shakespeare’s characters.
  • Comparisons between how Shakespeare understands mortality, and how other creative artists and philosophers–-of Shakespeare’s time, or before, or after–-have understood it.
  • More intensely personal and experientially engaged writing on how Shakespeare’s plays have helped you deal with death–-with your own mortality, or with the death of people that you know. How does Shakespeare make you look at death, and is this vision comforting or distressing? Does Shakespeare get to the truth of death, for you, or not?
  • Reflections on metaphysical and spiritual truths that arise from Shakespeare’s plays.
  • More provocative reflections on how the writing that is produced by the Modern academy–-writing that is critical, theoretical, historical—does not deal adequately with death in Shakespeare’s plays, and suggestions as to how this inadequacy can be rectified.

Suggestions of other topics will be warmly received.

Papers should be submitted to shakesreview@gmail.com, with a deadline of 20 May 2012.

All submissions will be reviewed by the editorial board, and those submissions that are selected will be published in our first online issue. Please contact the journal for further information.

Australasian Society for Classical Studies 34th Annual Conference – Call For Papers

Australasian Society for Classical Studies 34th Annual Conference
Sydney Grammar School, Darlinghurst, Sydney
Jan 18-Jan 20, 2013

Conference web site

The 34th annual conference of the Australasian Society for Classical Studies will be held from Friday 18 January to Sunday 20 January 2013. The main venue is Sydney Grammar School, Darlinghurst. Sydney Grammar School is located next to The Australia Museum.

ASCS members will have the opportunity to attend the one-day conference Alexander the Great and his Successors: The Art of King and Court on Thursday 17 January. The one-day conference is being held in conjunction with the Australia Museum’s exhibition Alexander the Great: 2000 Years of Treasures, a selection from the collection of The State Hermitage, St Petersburg.

Keynote Speakers

  • Dr Anna Trofimova, Head of the Antiquities Department, State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg
  • Prof. Andrew Stewart, Professor of Greek Art, History of Art Department, University of California, Berkeley
  • Prof. Robin Lane Fox, Reader in Ancient History, New College, University of Oxford

Offers of Papers

The deadline for the offer of papers is Friday 31 August, 2012. For more information about the conference please visit the conference website.

Conference Convenors

Associate Professor Kenneth Sheedy, Australian Centre for Numismatics Studies, Macquarie University (ken.sheedy@mq.edu.au).

Dr Blanche Menadier, Department of International Studies, Macquarie University (Blanche.menadier@mq.edu.au).

Please contact either Ken or Blanche with further enquiries.

Shifting Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity – Call For Papers

Shifting Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity X
The Transformation of Literary and Material Genres in Late Antiquity
University of Ottawa, Canada
21-24 March

Conference Website

The tenth biennial Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity conference will take place at the University of Ottawa, Canada, 21-24 March 2013. The period of Late Antiquity (A.D. 200-700) witnessed great cultural changes on a number of levels, e.g. in the emergence of new literary genres (such as hagiography) or of new building types (such as churches) or of new objects of art (consular diptychs). The aim of the conference is to explore what exactly these changes were and how and why they came about: were they the consequence of long-term trends or developments? Or were they rather the result of external factors, the products of what was once termed ‘an age of anxiety’? We hope to receive proposals of papers concerning the many genres that came into being or were transformed during the period, whether they be literary genres, such as panegyric, rhetoric, historiography, chronicles, poetry, epistolography and hagiography, or material genres, such as architecture, epigraphy and numismatics. The term ‘genre’ is thus interpreted broadly and papers that bring together several genres to address this issue, e.g. to consider Procopius’ Buildings both as panegyric and as a source on images of the city in Late Antiquity, or to consider the portrayal of saints in both hagiographies and artistic representations, are particularly welcome.

Two keynote speakers will be taking part in the conference: Professor John Matthews of Yale University (U.S.A.) and Professor Pierre-Louis Malosse, Université Paul-Valéry, Montpelier (France).

The deadline for proposals is 15 November 2012. Abstracts should be 200-300 words in length. Papers may be in English or French. Proposals from graduate students are welcome, but they should indicate on their submission whether they have discussed their proposal with their supervisor or not. Please note that the submission of an abstract carries with it a commitment to attend the conference should the abstract be accepted.

Proposals should be sent to: shiftingfrontiersx@gmail.com.

For further details on the conference see: http://www.scapat.ca/frontieres.