Bedchamber Scenes/Scènes de lit in European Early Modern Drama
University of Georgia Special Collections Libraries, Athens, Georgia, USA
April 12-13, 2017

The University of Georgia (UGA) and the Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3 (UPVM) and IRCL (UMR5186 CNRS) are delighted to announce a conference, “Bedchamber Scenes/Scènes de lit,” as part of their new collaboration, “Scene-Stealing/Ravir la scène,” sponsored by UGA, UPVM, CNRS, the Partner University Fund of the French Embassy, and the FACE Foundation.

Activities: Planned conference activities include seminars, paper sessions, plenary lectures, a staged reading, and a poster session for undergraduate research. Delegates will also have the opportunity to attend the UGA Theatre and Film Studies Department’s production of Titus Andronicus in the Cellar Theatre.

Call: We solicit seminar and panel papers from faculty and graduate students in English, French, Theatre, Film Studies and other related disciplines on the topic of bedchamber scenes in French and English or more broadly European drama, from the Renaissance through the Enlightenment. Such scenes appear in, for example, Edward II; A Woman Killed with Kindness; The Revenger’s Tragedy; Volpone; The Maid’s Tragedy; The White Devil; ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore; All’s Lost by Lust; Monsieur Thomas; Romeo and Juliet; Othello; Cymbeline; The Man of Mode; The Country Wife; Le Malade Imaginaire; and so on.

We invite individuals or groups of scholars to share different perspectives on the same scene and encourage interdisciplinary collaboration and exchange. Topics might include: well-known bedroom scenes from Shakespearean drama, such as the murder in Othello or Iachimo’s voyeurism in Cymbeline; bedtricks in early modern and Restoration comedy, on stage or screen; death-bed and sick-bed scenes; film adaptations of scenes that re-set them to bedrooms, as is frequently done with the “closet scene” in Hamlet; comparative approaches to bedroom scenes in early modern drama from England and France; appropriations of famous farcical bedroom scenes in television sit-coms or feature film romantic comedies; bedroom scenes in novelizations of early modern drama, including Shakespeare; theoretical investigations of intimate theatrical spaces; sex and sexism in early modern drama and its appropriations; Orientalism as a theatrical trope in bedchamber scenes in script and on stage; and many others.

We also welcome proposals from actors or performers who would like to participate in the conference, and from undergraduate students who would like to submit a presentation for a planned undergraduate poster session.

Contributions in both French and English are invited, although we will ask French-language authors to be willing to make an English translation of their work available at the conference.

Please send by January 31, 2017 the following:

1. 250-word abstract for 20-minute conference papers or for performances of various lengths, or a 200-word abstract for a manuscript to be circulated in a seminar or for an undergraduate research poster
2. 3-5 sentence biography
3. a brief sentence clarifying whether you would prefer to participate in a seminar, to lead a seminar, to deliver a paper, to offer a performance, or to present a poster.

Send all materials to Sujata Iyengar (iyengar@uga.edu) and Christy Desmet (cdesmet@uga.edu). The conference committee comprises representatives from both UGA and UPVM from English, French, Theatre, and related departments. Selected papers will be eligible for publication in the peer-reviewed multimedia online journal Scene Focus/Arrêt sur Scène.